#group17

Welcome to Step-Land

Stepping into Step-Land is stepping into an epic landscape of football fields.

Gently pressed into the ground, the football fields empathize the already existing and unique topography and form the tribunes around them. If the slope of the tribunes is too steep, rows of concrete panels from a demolishment site are holding it into place. Where the slope flattens out there is no extra material needed, but still makes a comfortable sitting area for the spectator. 

Having a site full of football fields, also brings up the responsibility to take care of them and to water them. To solve this issue by using zero energy, the site has a water storage inside the underground rooms of the target structure, where it collects the wate from rain and a single water stream of the Uetliberg. From there it equally distributes the needed water using the basic principle of gravity by always going down-hill in a surface water stream. Providing for water, three straight water lines run through the site and connect the various sections and fields.

To push the spectacle with water once more, we placed three hard ground football fields in front of the water reservoir that can be filled up with water in moments of rain and when the reservoir overflows. Then they turn into water basins and can be enjoyed as cooling areas until the water evaporates in hot summer days and the basins become football fields again. 

Step-Land not only provides for sport and a zero energy water system, but includes areas of leisure. Because football is not only about playing and being in the winning team, but about the gathering, meeting and exchanging their love for football. 

FS20, Arena, Project, by Group17

Stap-Land

 Crimson, green, yellow and white – do you see the footballpark outside? Go up, go down, go all around, and find the fields in different states. Watery or dry – it’s for you to choose where to play or if you just want to relax at small ponds – where you can stay and just observe the small polliwogs turn into joyful frogs. 

Football is not only football. It brings people together to play. It doesn’t require much to play football– you need two teams, a ball and two goals. A footballstadium does not need anything fancy, neither an improvised Grümpelturnier. So is our design – by slightly forming hills to lay, sit or stand, we are already creating tribunes. It actually does not take more than that. 

Energy strategy: Digging up into the earth, detaching the facades in the Brunaupark and their transport is our main energy consumption. But we also have an energy-positive strategy- by planting a lot of trees, bushes and lawn, turning carbondioxide into breathable air again. All the trees are from the region Mittelland – Alpen in Switzerland. This on one side, so endangered species which are threatened by neophytes can recover, but also to keep the transportation costs low. They also survive the best in their own habitat. We planted trees for every season – so at least something blooms every season, in its own beautiful colors. 

FS20, Arena, Project, by group17

Step-Land

Football is not only football. It brings people together to play. It doesn’t require much to play football– you need two teams, a ball and two goals. A footballstadium does not need anything fancy, neither an improvised Grümpelturnier. So is our design – by slightly forming hills to lay, sit or stand, we are already creating tribunes. It actually does not take more than that. 

Energy strategy: Football fields need in general a high amount of water supplies, especially during hotter seasons. To solve this problem without using any energy or extra water resources we make use of the given topography to collect the rainwater and to distribute it among the fields.

FS20, Arena, Project, by Group 17

Stap-Land

Football is not only football. It brings people together to play. It doesn’t require much to play football– you need two teams, a ball and two goals. A footballstadium does not need anything fancy, neither an improvised Grümpelturnier. So is our design – by slightly forming hills to lay, sit or stand, we are already creating tribunes. It actually does not take more than that. Still we have rows of tribunes, which are more defined, for the average seating situation. We created a grid of 9 fields (in which three are water reservoirs) a big field for big events, and a café. All of them combined in a sumperimposed geomertry and repetitiveness. The topography is used to make our tribunes, so all in all it’s an underground construction.

Material thesis: All the material we are getting, is from the Brunaupark near the site, which is planned to be demolished. We will use bricks, wood, concrete pillars, stones, doors, windows, lampposts. Mostly it is material from the façade. Using different material will make the site look like a playful bricolage. We are working with the angle of embankment, why all the angles of the tribune are under 45 degrees (mostly 30 degrees), which mostly prevents a landslide. Because its not preventing a landslide fully, we still need foundations of recycled concrete to stabilize the tribunes.

 Energy thesis: Modern footballstadiums nowadays are energywise a catastrophe. They need a lot of electricity to run, a lot of building material (mostly concrete and steel), and for the lawn, a lot of water. The water could be significantly reduced if another type of lawn would be chosen. Footballlawn is a highly bred mixture for top quality plays, which requires 10 liters/m^2 per day. For our footballarena, we are using playlawn, requiring 4 liters per day, or 8 liters every other day. Since it is still a big amount of water we need to collect (and did not want to cut waterways drastically), we installed a raincollectorsystem on chosen places on our site, which cover the full amount of water needed andeven a bit more. The second part of our energy thesis is about the reuse of material, or urban mining. In Switzerland, the equivalent of 200’000 houses is being newly built. The collection of their material destroys landscapes, when the material is actually fine and could be reused. The city is our quarry. Also, we will reuse a lot of bricks, which are considered to be hard to get rid of nowadays, if a building is to be demolished. And we will stop eating meat for our site, we swear.

1) Site drawing 1:500

2) View upon the football fields of Stap-Land and Zurich beneath

3) View to the large football field, clearly framed by the modernist building

4) View to the cafeteria-valley underneath the target structure

5) Plan of tubes and tanks, that collect and distribute water  

6) Calculations of water distribution

7) A moment at basin B

8) A moment at basin C1 & C2

9) Section and detail drawing