PEACE STADIUM Connected by SoftBank – design description

This brand new football stadium in Nagasaki is expected as part of a major revitalisation project at the Urakami riverfront. It's a symbolic location, known primarily for the proximity (around 1 km) of ground zero, where the nuclear bomb was dropped in 1945.

Of course today it's part of a vibrant and thriving city. The site already received improved road grid (2011) and in 2022 the superfast Shinkansen train will arrive within a few-minute walk from the plot. It's thus time for the old Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plant to make way for new development, without room for industry anymore.

Along the “fun to win in Nagasaki” motto proposed by Japanet, the plot will largely be occupied by leisure and commercial uses. In terms of floor space, however, office space will be dominant (18,400 m²) and commercial will follow (17,900 m²).

Most of these uses will be packed into two towers. The northern one (115m, 34 floors) was to house 300 apartments and a hotel with 300 rooms, while the southern one (150m, 36 floors) was to comprise a shopping centre, multi-level parking and offices on top. Eventually, the vision was reviewed and functions spread across smaller buildings, with a 5,000 indoor arena added.

The stadium itself will use more of the land than main towers combined and will not be built exactly along the plot, rather in tilted to fit the north-south axis. This creates minor spatial constraints in two corners, hence the octagonal shape. The stadium's final shape is likely to change, however, as groundbreaking is only expected to take place in 2021.