Aecom and Ramboll will oversee the major redevelopment of the Qatar’s Al Rayyan stadium for the 2022 football World Cup stadium, which includes increasing its capacity from 22,000 to 40,000 and installing a “digital skin” that will show match scores, photographs of players and other relevant information.
According to the announcement, Aecom has been selected as a project manager, while Ramboll has been appointed the project’s design consultant.
The works on Al Rayyan stadium will be supervised by programme manager CH2M HILL.
Ramboll will work alongside London-based sport architecture firm Pattern on the stadium design and architect Pascall + Watson and landscape architect Gillespie, also based in London, will produce a design for the surrounding areas.
The new stadium will feature advanced cooling technology, which will be able to cool the field of play to an optimal temperature of 26ºC and the stands to between 24ºC and 28ºC, even when the Qatari temperatures will reach 50ºC.
The stadium will also incorporate demountable top tier of seating, allowing its capacity to be reduced back down to 22,000 seats after the World Cup. The remaining seats will be used to build football facilities in developing countries that lack sporting infrastructure.
The firms will are also responsible for the design and development of training sites, an adjacent fan zone and other areas for fans, team delegations, match officials and the media.
The project is the second Qatar World Cup stadium, which has y a designated design team, after Aecom and Zaha Hadid have been awarded the 40,000-seater new-build Al Wakrah stadium in November of this year.
For the remaining 10 stadiums - including the 86,000-seat Lusail stadium, which will host the 2022 World Cup final – the nomination of the project design teams is expected start this month.
Hassan Al Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar 2022 World Cup client the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, said: “We are rapidly making progress, [and are]well on schedule to deliver all stadiums long before fans arrive for the 2022 Fifa World Cup.”
Photo: Building