World's First All-Timber Football Stadium Announced

Zaha Hadid Architects will work with Max Fordham to create the world's first all-timber football stadium.

The new carbon-neutral home of Forest Green Rovers in Gloucestershire will seat 5,000 spectators.

Designed to be the world's greenest football stadium, it will be constructed almost completely from wood and powered by sustainable energy sources.

The ambitious, vegan, non-league club held a competition for the design, with over 50 submissions from architects around the world.

Neil Smith, a Senior Partner at Max Fordham, was thrilled to be part of the winning team. 'This is going to be a globally significant project with a great architect and a really engaged client,' he explained. 'There's a genuine ambition from all involved to set a new benchmark in sustainable stadium design.'

Dale Vince, Ecotricity founder and Forest Green Rovers chairman, said: “Zaha Hadid Architects has built some fantastic sports stadia and facilities around the world, including one at the Olympic Park in London. They’ve designed one of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup, and now they’ve designed one for Forest Green.

The really standout thing about this stadium is that it’s going to be almost entirely made of wood – the first time that will have been done anywhere in the world.'

The new stadium is part of the club's £100 million Eco Park development, including a public transport hub and nature reserve, and represents the most recent in a long standing relationship between Zaha Hadid Architects and Max Fordham.