Eco-Stadium

April 2014 – THE GALLUS ECO-STADIUM  went through various stages over a 2 year period.

We had a lot of local interest,  early stage talks, and some agreement with Glasgow City Planning and City Properties about use of the Car Park at Water Row to build a temporary stadium in 2014. I was not successful in raising funds for the large build or a second, scaled-down build.  The Gallus Games continues – travelling in a bus and popping up around the Glasgow. The whole city is now our stadium.

For those of you interested in the design concept and process – the details are below.

 

August 2011 – STARTING POINT   This work took place as part of a lottery funded feasibility study

My original idea was that the Gallus finals would be held in ‘real’ stadiums around Glasgow, but they will be closed in advance of the Official Games for security reasons.

So… having been on a recent trip to Rome, I got inspired by the Colisseum (no less!).
The Romans were great for taking on grand projects – Rome needs water? Let’s build miles of aquaduct. Centurians needed in far flung places? Lets build roads straight out from Rome. So I decided that we needed to build our own stadium.

Our Eco-Stadium will hold up to 1000 spectators, be covered from the weather and obviously built from recycled materials (some collected by local schools). It will have a recycled garden or walk to the entrance, with animals, trees and plants made from recycled materials and showcasing energy efficient techniques. The Stadium will be a vibrant, impressive and celebratory local attraction that will stand for 6 to 12 months. As ‘Gallus HQ’ it will embody the spirit of the Gallus-ness.

The current economic climate means that there are empty sites around Glasgow waiting for developments to happen on them. So-called ‘stalled spaces’. If you would like to see the sites we looked at,  you can download a pdf copy of the site search report here.

I have been working with City Design Coop to search out stalled spaces that would be suitable for our stadium. Our current favourites are Water Row in Govan and the Old Meat Market site in the East End near Bellgrove Station. The nature of these sites is that they may be built on at any time, so we will have to be flexible. If you have a suggestion for a site please get in touch.

THE DESIGN PROCESS

April 2012 – I invited three designers/architects to submit blue-sky designs for the Eco-Stadium. Here are the exciting images that they came up with:

Eco-stadium JJ 1 …. Eco-stadium JJ 2James Johnson Getmade Design

The Design Panel (Riccardo Marini – Architect, Liz Gardiner – Fablevision Govan, and Kathy Friend – Gallus Director) heard a pitch for each idea at the end of April, with the hope of finding a designer or architect to work with on the next stage of the plan.

 

…. Hamish BiggBigg Design

We liked all the designs, it was hard to choose! So we gave points for each area of the brief. Two companies came top on the basis of community engagement, use of recycled products and Gallus-ness.

Eco-stadium Collective

 

 

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   Ewan Imrie, Emma Wood,                 Lizzie Smith – Collective Architecture

 

 

 

They will meet with the rest of the Design Team in May 2012 for the next stage.  I am very excited to see my idea coming into a solid form, and will post photos of the process.

Oh.. I suppose you want to know who we invited to work with us..?   James Johnson and Collective Architecture.

DESIGN TEAM MEETS  – June 2012

The Design Team met to workshop final ideas for the stadium ( Kathleen Friend, Riccardo Marini, Liz Gardiner- Fablevision, Ewan Imrie & Lizzie Smith – Collective Architecture, Richard East & Kirstin Taylor – City Design Coop, James Johnson – Getmade Design)

FINAL DESIGN – July 2012

The stadium will be made from recycled building materials, and wire gabions filled with recycled aluminium, plastic and glass. The starting line is at the top of the figure of eight track, which is designed so that runners start at the same point and all run the same distance. The dots are arenas for smaller events. The arena is reversible, so that the audience can sit on the track for performances and races in the dot arenas or seating.

The design is influenced by the history of Water Row in Govan, a temporary car park on a piece of disused land. This was the site of Doomster hill, where in medieval times, the Kings of Strathclyde met to make laws and discuss issues. An early parliament site, this hill was part of a network of moot hills around Scotland and Europe. It was demolished in the mid 1800’s to make way for a shipbuilding yard.

This is a photo of Water Row in the 1930’s with the road running down to the Govan Ferry Slipway and the shipyard in the foreground.

 

 

We hope that the Govan based Galgael Trust who specialise in boatbuilding, will be able to make the sail canopy structures below.

 

 

 

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