Eco Park (III) – design description

The George King Architects team created a stadium inspired by Stroud Valleys landscape. Specifically, by the Neolithic burial mounds that have been preserved to this day. Thus the stadium-mound form with narrow wooden alleys leading visitors to the very top, allowing to have a glance inside the stadium.

This concept is one of two rejected, but commended entries of the international design competition by Forest Green Rovers FC. The aim is to compose a vast sports-leisure complex at M5 motorway’s Junction 13. The complex will cover 100 acres (40 hectares) and apart from the main stadium should provide 5 training fields (3 full-sized, 1 covered and 1 with running track). The location is some 6 miles (9km) away from Forest Green Rovers’ current stadium, The New Lawn.

Main emphasis was put on ecology and sustainability, thus the large number of entries (50), of which 9 were shortlisted and 2 reached the final.