Zaha Hadid may have passed away in 2016 at 65, but her architectural spirit continues to shape the Middle East with grace, innovation, and a reverence for heritage. Her UK-based firm carries her legacy of bold Middle Eastern sensuality. She wasn’t shy to dominate an all-male world of starchitects becoming one herself. She even designed refugee shelter with her own brand of culture and grace.

The latest project carrying her name—the Asaan, Misk Heritage Museum in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia—is more than just a cultural institution. It is a homecoming for Muslim and Arabian influence on design and architecture.

Hadad was the first female and first Muslim to win the coveted Pritzker prize.

She was known as “The Lady Gaga of Architecture” but her work was not sustainable by design.

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) which continues her legacy, and supported by the Misk Foundation, the new museum blends low-carbon adobe construction, according to press materials with bold contemporary design, becoming ZHA’s first earthen building globally. Yet despite its forward-thinking form, the Asaan Museum is built literally and metaphorically from the soil of Saudi heritage.

Related: Zaha Hadid dead at 65

“Asaan” means “inheritance passed down through generations,” and that inheritance is being reimagined in the heart of the Najdi world. The museum will rise in Diriyah’s historic At-Turaif district—a UNESCO World Heritage site where 600 years of mud-brick architecture tell the story of the first Saudi state.

This is not another glass monolith. The Asaan is made of locally produced clay mud-bricks, shaped into thick, cooling adobe walls that honor the vernacular of Najdi architecture and reduce energy consumption in the blistering desert heat. The structure is organized around three shaded courtyards, anchoring programs in education, the arts, and administration, just as the heart of old Najdi homes once revolved around their shaded interior courtyards.

Related: what is Najdi architecture?

Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad, Iraq was always drawn to the cultural topography of the Middle East. Her projects across the region have been provocative, poetic, and deeply aware of place. From the Bee’ah Headquarters in Sharjah—a Green Prophet favorite for its net-zero ambitions—to the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) in Riyadh, her buildings dance between the sensuousness in math and the mystical.

Related: Saudi opera house modeled after Saudi mud palaces

But, as our resident ports architect wrote, Zaha was in no way an environmentalist, even though we wanted her to be one: “in her penchant for novel building materials, and the result was difficult-to-construct projects that often dramatically blew budgets. She showed a chronic aversion to local context, and no moral conscience when it came to environmental issues, or the health and safety protection for people who brought her designs to reality. Apparently her clients did not find this problematic.”

The Asaan Museum takes that ethos even deeper—into the very earth of Diriyah. The Asaan Museum is part of the ambitious Diriyah Gate masterplan, which aims to transform the ancient city into a 100% walkable, climate-resilient cultural capital. Public plazas, rooftop promenades, conservation labs, and interactive exhibits will bring Saudis and international visitors alike into intimate contact with the country’s layered history.

Related: Catch a glimpse of the House of Saudi’s past, in these incredible mud palaces

The museum is not merely a place to view the past—it is designed to engage, educate, and empower. In a region where cultural erasure often moves faster than preservation, the museum offers a new model: a living heritage center designed by a woman who understood the language of permanence and transformation.

In 2012, Green Prophet wrote about how Zaha Hadid’s work in the Middle East was “a contradiction—extravagant yet humble, futuristic but rooted.” Today, Asaan fulfills that paradox perfectly. It is at once timeless and timely, emerging from the earth to remind us that the future is not built only from new materials—but from memory, identity, and ancestral wisdom. Let’s hope they lose local builders, pay them a fair wage, and that materials are made from local, sustainable sources.

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It’s reasonable that the prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Chairman of Neom wants what he wants: endless opulence fuelled by oil money to dazzle the west with fake grandeur. The joke is that western architect firms participate in these scandals. The latest is a winter wonderland village that Saudi Arabia will build in the middle of the desert as part of Saudi Arabia’s climate nightmare city Neom. 

Trojena part of Vision 2030 

“Trojena will redefine mountain tourism for the world by creating a place based on the principles of ecotourism, highlighting our efforts to preserve nature and enhance the community’s quality of life, which is aligned with the goals of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030,” he said in a statement.

“It also confirms our commitment to be part of the global effort to protect the environment. Trojena will be an important addition to tourism in the region, a unique example of how Saudi Arabia is creating destinations based on its geographical and environmental diversity.”

Nice statements but what’s the carbon footprint of building a giant resort in the middle of a pristine desert. What kind of magical renewable energy does the prince of Saudi Arabia think will run this project?

Saudi Arabia won the bid to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games at what will be called its Trojena resort, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects  (Zaha Hadid passed away a number of years ago at a young 65), The Holland-based UNStudio, UK’s Aedas, German’s LAVA and Bureau Proberts from Australia.

Have any of these firms no sense to say that the Emperor of Saudi Arabia is wearing no clothes?

Distorted applications of renewable energy

These firms that talk about sustainability (and remove themselves from airport projects) like they actually care about the state of our climate, are designing the 2029 Asian Winter Games for a 50-mile skiing and outdoor activity resort that is set to be completed in 2026 as part of Neom. It will operate all year long as a ski resort in the colder months, and a wellness retreat in the warmer.

“Trojena will have a suitable infrastructure to create the winter atmosphere in the heart of the desert, to make this Winter Games an unprecedented global event,” explained Neom chief executive Nadhmi al-Nasr.

The Olympic Council of Asia picked the Saudi candidacy: “The deserts and mountains of Saudi Arabia will soon be a playground for Winter sports!” the OCA said in a statement announcing its decision early this month.

The International Olympic Committee said on Wednesday it was not consulted in the decision by the Olympic Council of Asia to pick Saudi Arabia as the hosts of the 2029 Asian winter Games, reports Reuters. 

Foreign starchitects plan Saudi’s future

The firm Lava master-planned the resort, which will offer winter skiing, making it the first outdoor ski location in the country. 

The same firm, Lava, also designed a futuristic folded-vertical village for Trojena, see above.

Location of Trojena, part of Neom

Geographically speaking, Trojena is located about 30 miles (or 50km) from the Red Sea coast and is close to the border of Jordan. While the majority of Saudi Arabia is a desert climate, the southwestern part where Trojena will be built is semi-arid. It will be part of a massive development project called Neom.

The exact site is to be constructed on a mountain across the sea from Mount Sinai, called Jabal al-Lawz, also known as Gebel el-Lawz, which is a mountain located in northwest Saudi Arabia, near the Jordanian border, above the Gulf of Aqaba at 8,465 feet above sea level. The name means ‘mountain of almonds’.

The peak of Mount Lawz, consists of a light-colored, calc-alkaline granite. A man-made freshwater lake designed by Bureau Proberts, of Australia will need to be full of water year-round to fuel the snow machines, while Zaha Hadid Architects “came up with other elements of the design”, reported the Neom team in a press release.

Weather patterns in Trojena, Neom

The best temperatures for making snow are between -5°C (23°F) and -25°c (-13°F). Too warm, ski resort owners report and their machines are too expensive to run. The ideal conditions are dry and cold. Only for a short window, in January, do temperatures at the proposed Trojena site, dip below 0°C.

Trojena advertises its skiing will be open December to March. Wellness season, adventure season and lake season, the rest of the year.

Snow machines’ carbon footprint

Based at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) conducts studies on changing weather patterns and climate change and the effects of climate on snow and snow production in the United States.

NSIDC, software developer Julia Collins has some thoughts on snowmaking. She’s not a fan. “If the weather is too warm, it doesn’t do any good, and it has a carbon footprint,” she says.

Architecture magazines such as Dezeen continue to advertise bombastic planet-sabotaging projects as though they are revolutionary. 

Commenters on Dezeen magazine, on the other hand, offer their sobering view:

“Starchitects (and especially those who aren’t themselves, but work by borrowing the fame of somebody else) are truly miserable as they will do anything for money,” said one.

“Just save everyone some time and pump oil right onto the mountains and then light it on fire,” said another. 

“It just goes to show that money can buy anything, except taste, morals, common sense, principles, ethics etc.”

… are some of my favorites. 

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She was born in Baghdad in 1950 to an affluent family who strongly encouraged her educational and career ambitions. After graduating from the American University of Beirut with a degree in mathematics, she moved to London to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). A job offer from one of her former AA professors, architect and design theorist Rem Koolhaas, brought her to Rotterdam in 1976. A year later, she made partner in his groundbreaking firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

In 1983, she won an international design competition for a leisure center in Hong Kong.  Her entry, entitled The Peak (shown below), earned her £100,000 in prize money which she used to establish her own studio in London. The Peak presaged two aspects of her career: her aversion to rigid geometrical symmetry is clearly evident and, as would turn out with most of her designs, this project would never be built.

Arriving in London, she undertook commissions for interior design, as example creating the stage set for the 1999-2000 “Nightlife” world tour of British electropop duo The Pet Shop Boys. It was around this time that she became inexplicably famous, despite not actually building anything. Her outsize reputation was inflated by influential admirers who viewed her exploration of atypical building materials and her wholesale rejection of traditional form as a refreshing repudiation of the design status quo. In 2004, when she was awarded the Pritzker Prize – considered the “Nobel prize of architecture” – the jury praised her persistent defiance of convention.

Her first constructed project happened in 1993, a jewel-box of a fire station on the campus of a Swiss-German furniture factory. According to Stephen Bayley, writing for The Spectator, it’s “shrieking concrete angles and disruptive interiors photographed very well and were dutifully recorded in the magazines, but were not much liked by the firemen. It was decommissioned and is now an exhibition center.”  See image above.

She went on to design bold, beautiful and controversial buildings around the world with a burgeoning list of Middle East clients. Projects planned and underway include the soaring Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad (above), the Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Center on Saadiyat Island (below), and the Riyadh Metro Station. Other uncompleted works include one of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and a new Iraqi parliament building in Baghdad.

Hadid deftly juggled dual roles in the industry, retaining international “starchitect” status while also enjoying cache as an industry outsider. “My work is not within the accepted box,” she said in an interview with HuffPost. “Maybe because I am a woman. Also an Arab. There was a certain prejudice about these things.”

As with her A-list peers, such as Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava, her style was more about personal vision than public utility. The engineering required to stabilize her fantabulous forms was complex, and she acknowledged that some of her early plans had posed structural challenges. “I used to like buildings floating,” Hadid told the BBC, “Now I know that they can’t float.”

Add in her penchant for novel building materials, and the result was difficult-to-construct projects that often dramatically blew budgets. She showed a chronic aversion to local context, and no moral conscience when it came to environmental issues, or the health and safety protection for people who brought her designs to reality. Apparently her clients did not find this problematic.

Architects solve design problems, and often apply their particular aesthetics to everyday items that are accessible to a broader consumer base than, say, a new home or museum.  Like Gehry, she cashed in on her rising “brand” by lending her design sense to jewelry, furniture, super-yachts (above), and cars. Hadid became a prolific product designer, creating swimsuits, utensils, and footwear (below). It’s good business, and maybe it’s good design, but it’s not architecture.

Kudos to her firm for progressing development and increased application of computer-aided design, and for exhaustive experimentation in pushing the limits of glass and steel and carbon-fiber building components.  Her ascension to the podium with the architectural ‘greats’ has been inspirational to women in every aspect of the design/build industry.

But is her work truly architecture?  Or is it sculpture writ large, with a dollop of fashion and show-biz?

Sometime in the past century architecture veered off its place among the traditional Fine Arts, becoming less about manipulating form to maximize user experience and more about manipulating form, well, because you could.

The architectural experience became less about the flow of an individual through light and space over time, and more about the malleability of new-age materials to create fluidly sensual surfaces.  Architecture is the most functional of the arts. It must serve its purpose, its beauty demands to go deeper than its skin. Her ability to devise new ways to manipulate form is arguably more akin to sculpture than to the design of inhabitable, fit for purpose space.

Yesterday her office released a press statement declaring her “the greatest female architect in the world”.  What’s irrefutable is that Hadid incited debate, about what is good design, and what is architecture. She rose to the ranks of the world’s most iconic architects, riding on the smooth, curvaceous backs of her neo-futuristic designs.

Details have not been released about a memorial service, but those wishing to leave condolence messages are invited to send them to pa@zaha-hadid.com. Godspeed, Dame Hadid.

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Just about every week UK-based and Iraq-born architect Zaha Hadid unveils new plans for eloquent but often outrageous skyscrapers and building projects around the world. The latest is a $420 million trio of skyscrapers for Brisbane, Australia, in her words, with “design [that] tapers each structure to minimise their footprint and open the riverfront to the public; creating a vibrant civic space for Toowong within a new riverside park.”

According to the developer, each of the three towers will have a multi-layered design with a glazed curtain wall with glass reinforced concrete. Called the Toowong development, the towers will include  486 apartments and eight “villas”

This result is feminine and organic, emulating organic forms like flower petals. Zaha Hadid has been criticized in the past for developing a stadium in Qatar that looks like female genitals.

The proposed building project would be located on land four kilometers west of Brisbane’s Central Business District, and will include parks space of about 7,300 meters.

The site has a poor environmental footprint. The area was occupied by Australia’s ABC Radio and after 17 women who worked there contracted breast cancer, the building was sold and vacated due to radiation levels. BY 2010 authorities declared the zone radiation free. The source of radiation appeared to from uranium.

As the Brisbane Times reported in 2008, “The site housed a uranium processing plant between 1911 and 1916, which produced products used to paint luminous clocks, watches and instrument dials.”

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Zaha Hadid Architecture won an international competition to design the center in 2007. She told Dezeen that it’s her most important design to date.

Located in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the Heydar Aliyev Center is designed to host the country’s cultural programs and activities while making a concise break from the rigid, formal architectural language prevalent in the Soviet Union.

“The design of the Heydar Aliyev Center establishes a continuous, fluid relationship between its surrounding plaza and the building’s interior,” Hadid’s team write in their design brief for Dezeen.

“The plaza, as the ground surface; accessible to all as part of Baku’s urban fabric, rises to envelop an equally public interior space and define a sequence of event spaces dedicated to the collective celebration of contemporary and traditional Azeri culture.”

Related: Comparing Qatar stadium to a vagina is “ridiculous” says Zaha Hadid

In order to achieve that fluid style which appears to push out of the surrounding urban fabric like a mountain, the design team led by Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu built a steel space frame and clad the exterior in overlapping glass-fiber reinforced concrete panels.

“Fluidity in architecture is not new to this region,” they add.

“In historical Islamic architecture, rows, grids, or sequences of columns flow to infinity like trees in a forest, establishing non-hierarchical space. Continuous calligraphic and ornamental patterns flow from carpets to walls, walls to ceilings, ceilings to domes, establishing seamless relationships and blurring distinctions between architectural elements and the ground they inhabit.”

Daylighting may offset some energy use, but frankly, from an environmental perspective, this building has virtually nothing to offer. From an engineering, design and maybe even especially from a cultural perspective, all accolades are definitely worthy.

Photos via Iwan Baan

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We’d love to tell you that the Middle East’s most famous contemporary architect is doing great green things for the region, but we can’t. Instead, Zaha Hadid’s latest project in Dubai, the Opus Hotel and Office Tower designed in collaboration with Meliá Hotels International, may well be among her most extravagant.

A lot of large architecture firms are working in the Middle East, and most have cottoned on to the notion that it’s essential to build within energetic and resource constraints. Most, that is, but Hadid.

We have lamented the Iraqi architect’s failure to be an example for the region several times in the past. Her swooping volumes are consistently arresting, but they do little to nothing to perpetuate a more responsible approach to design.

She has made some overtures by greening the 2020 Olympic stadium for Tokyo, but in general, Hadid seems dangerously unconcerned with adding responsible structures to the planet. But what about the LEED Silver Galaxy SOHO Project, you might ask, to which I would respond that most environmentalists no longer believe that LEED is sufficiently rigorous.

We now know that if everyone on the planet were to attempt to live like Americans do, we would need five planets to provide the requisite natural resources. Instead of trying to achieve this lofty goal, now is a time for scaling back our desires and living more within our means, within the planet’s means.

This is not the time for extravagant structures like the Opus Office Tower slated for a 2016 opening in Dubai.

Related: Comparing Qatar stadium to a vagina is “ridiculous” says Zaha Hadid

The mixed-use building will consist of two separate volumes with a vacuous core linked by covered walkways on all four sides. While it appears to have been designed to maximize natural lighting, no mention is made of incorporating renewable energy, energy efficient appliances or lighting, or doing anything groundbreaking to offset this 21-storey structure’s environmental footprint.

With penthouse suites and private rooftop terraces, a luxury hotel and plenty of chances to burn money in retail outlets at the tower’s base, the latest addition to the Burj Khalifa complex merely extends the mirage of finite plenty in the emirate.

In addition to designing the tower itself for the developer Omniyat, Hadid has been commissioned to select each piece of furniture for the interior. We know that she won’t be hitting up local designers who work with recycled or repurposed materials.

Nope. The first Meliá Hotels International project in Dubai promises to be one of the glitziest towers yet, and that’s saying a lot.

:: Zaha Hadid

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In its original FIFA bid, Qatar pledged to build nine new stadiums and refurbish an additional three to ensure adequate space for one of the world’s most popular sporting events.

The stadiums, it was said, would be constructed with state-of-the art technology that would incorporate solar power to cool interiors since temperatures are particularly high in the summer.

This has been the cause of ongoing controversy; earlier this year, FIFA’s Secretary General Jerome Valcke said it would be impossible to have a summer World Cup. But he spoke out of turn, and FIFA has left the issue open-ended for now.

And Qatar’s shady human rights record first unveiled by The Guardian brought even more scrutiny. Nepalese workers reported dismal working conditions and poorly ventilated, cramped living quarters and insufficient food and drink.

Last summer, according to The Guardian, roughly one person died every day from heart attacks brought on by extreme heat and exhaustion.

Related: “Comparing Qatar stadium to a vagina is ridiculous,” says Zaha Hadid

What, if anything, either of these two issues has to do with the decision to cut the number of planned stadiums by one third is not exactly clear.

Ghanim Al Kuwari, the organizing committee’s senior manager for projects, announced the plans at a conference in Doha yesterday, according to Bloomberg News, but failed to give a reason for the decision.

But John Sfakianakis, chief investment strategist at MASIC, a Riyadh investment company, told the paper that their decision was motivated by costs.

“It does always make good sense to do necessary cost-cutting and reviews of capex for such huge projects that are front-loaded.”

As it stands, Qatar will spend at least $34 billion on rail and metro facilities, $7 billion on port development, $12 billion on an airport that is behind schedule already, and $4 billion on the stadiums that will most likely fall into disuse once the World Cup is over, though it is very likely the end costs will far exceed early estimates.

Construction of Zaha Hadid’s Al Wakrah stadium, which many claim looks like a vagina, is underway and the Al Rayyan Stadium should be next. Construction on it should start by the end of 2014 or early 2015.

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Three years ago, Qatar won the right to be the first Middle Eastern country to host a World Cup in 2022; after much speculation, FIFA’s Secretary General Jerome Valcke publicly ruled out the possibility that the competition will take place in summer.

Since winning the bid with designs of spectacular solar-powered stadiums, the Emirate has insisted that it will provide comfortable facilities for both athletes and visitors, but Valcke is adamantly against the idea of a summer event.

Previously, the Secretary General recently he said he would defer to medical specialists to determine whether it is safe to hold the games in Qatar in summer, when temperatures average between 95 and 113 degrees Fahrenheit. But on Wednesday, he took a more definitive stance.

“The dates of the World Cup will not be in June or July. I think it will be played between November 15 and January 15 the latest,” he told France Inter Radio on Wednesday.

“If you play between November 15 and, let’s say, the end of December, it’s the time when the weather is the most favourable,” Valcke added.

But it seems that Valcke spoke out of turn, because FIFA was quick to release a statement that no firm decision has been made about when the 2022 World Cup will take place – a reflection, perhaps, of a division within the organization.

ABC News reports: “The precise event date is still subject to an ongoing consultation process,” FIFA said in a statement released a short time after Valcke’s comments were splashed around the world. “As the event will not be played until 8 years’ time, the consultation process will not be rushed and will be given the necessary time to consider all of the elements relevant for a decision.”

Qatar’s organizing committee claims it is prepared for anything – a summer or a winter event, ABC News reports.

“During the FIFA Executive Committee meeting in October, it was agreed that FIFA would enter a period of consultation on the ideal time of year to host the World Cup in Qatar — with a recommendation expected after the World Cup in Brazil,” they said on Wednesday.

“We await the outcome of this consultation period. We will be ready to host the World Cup regardless of the outcome.”

This may be one of the most controversial World Cups in history. The weather’s not right, working conditions are said to be akin to modern day slavery, and Zaha Hadid got all kinds of heat for publishing renders of a stadium said to look like a vagina.

It seemed that finally the summer/winter debate had been settled, but apparently not. The confusion ensues. Stay tuned.

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When I covered the newly released Al-Wakrah stadium design, which Zaha Hadid worked on with AECOM, I was more interested in the way that both firms are helping Qatar achieve their goal to stage a carbon neutral World Cup in 2022.

This despite the blogosphere’s insistence that the design looks like a vagina. (By the way, my boyfriend pointed out that most people were erroneously referring to the vulva as a vagina!)

How disappointing I thought, and what a sign of the times, that even the Guardian stooped so low as to perpetuate the hype that Zaha Hadid had designed a stadium that resembles a woman’s most sacred anatomy for a Muslim nation. To do that deliberately would be suicide, not to mention deeply disrespectful.

“The design for Qatar’s new Al-Wakrah sports stadium has quickly gone viral,” the paper wrote, “with its shiny, pinkish tinge, its labia-like side appendages and its large opening in the middle, the supposedly innocent building (“based upon the design of a traditional Qatari dhow boat”) was just asking for trouble.”

Hadid dismisses this claptrap in an interview with Time Magazine.

“It’s really embarrassing that they come up with nonsense like this,” she complained. “What are they saying? Everything with a hole in it is a vagina? That’s ridiculous.”

To be fair, the digital age has pushed us all to fight for hits and traffic in order to stay afloat, and the word vagina in any title is sure to get a lot of attention, but the Guardian’s Holly Baxter concludes with a statement that is so clearly out of touch with Qatar’s culture, the paper should be mortified.

“Perhaps the bigwigs who will be running the stadium should embrace this so-called faux pas and rebrand it as a deliberate nod towards the increasingly liberal Qatari policies concerning women in sport,” she wrote.

Qatar may be liberalizing their policies, but they would never sanction a building that mimics female genitalia. We’re talking about a region where free hugs can get a person arrested, for goodness sakes!

Sure, we are far less indignant when people describe skyscrapers as phallic (and most are), which admittedly underscores a serious double standard – a point that Hadid makes.

“Honestly, if a guy had done this project…,” she says.

But Qatar has much bigger issues to worry about – like whether or not they are going to change their policies to ensure that people building these stadiums will actually survive working conditions akin to modern day slavery (a story, ironically, the otherwise respectable Guardian broke) – than to stave off the media’s wanton lust for attention.

:: Dezeen

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Qatar has promised a carbon neutral 2022 World Cup, but we know from the Masdar City experiment how hard that is to achieve. Still, here are five dubious steps AECOM and Zaha Hadid Architects are reported to be taking to support that goal with their joint design – Al-Wakrah Stadium.

Shaped like a dhow out of deference to Qatar’s long fishing history, the Al-Wakrah stadium will incorporate shading,  along with aerodynamic and mechanical cooling components to ensure that the spectator stands and the grass pitch never rise above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Slated for construction in Al-Wakrah, the southernmost host city for the 2022 World Cup less than 10 miles outside of the capital Doha, the stadium will seat up to 40,000 spectators; half of those modular seats will be removed and shipped to developing countries at the tournament’s close.

But how – pray tell – does the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee imagine that they will achieve a carbon neutral sporting event? Well, that depends. It turns out that there are varying degrees of carbon neutrality.

Some carbon neutral standards require only that a building produces no greenhouse gas emissions while operating, but this fails to consider the energy required to produce materials (such as concrete, which has a high embodied energy footprint), transport materials, and construct the building.

Other standards are more rigorous and take into account the entire cycle of a building, along with the surrounding transportation infrastructure. In order to be truly carbon neutral, according to the Stern Review published by the British government in 2006, a building must generate 80 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional one. 

Based on the following five steps that the design team will take to edge towards carbon neutrality with the Al-Wakrah stadium,  as outlined by Trade Arabia, we suspect that if Qatar can come even close to carbon neutrality, they will do so by observing the most lenient standards.

1. 15 percent of the tournament’s energy will be generated by on-site renewable energy sources.
2. Water use will be reduced by 60 percent.
3. 15 percent of the permanent structures will be built using reused or recycled material.
4. A full 90 percent of construction waste will be diverted through smart design and waste management. 
5. Structural timber will be sourced sustainably.

Admittedly, these will be admirable achievements if attained, and with AECOM on board they may well be.

But Qatar has a very immature supply chain of green building materials, which means the majority required to build nine stadiums, along with $140 billion in additional infrastructure such as a new airport, rail system, roads, and a new seaport, will have to be shipped in. This greatly increases the embodied energy footprint.

Construction is expected to break ground in early 2014.

:: Trade Arabia

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