Save this picture! First Place: Bamboo Stadium. Image via arch out loud

Architecture research initiative “arch out loud” has announced the winners of their “Waste: Multi-Purpose Stadium” competition, asking participants to speculate on the design of a multi-purpose stadium at the former Olusosun Landfill in Lagos, Nigeria.

The competition was organized in response to the fact that the world creates more than a billion tons of garbage per year, most of which is incinerated, buried, and explored to landfills. As populations and major cities expand, so too must our “ability to reverse wasteful tendencies and begin living more efficiently and sustainably.”

The megalopolis of Lagos, Nigeria has, since 1992, exporting its waste to the 100-acre Olusosun landfill. As the city grew from 7 million to 21 million, the once-distant landfill has now been enveloped by the city, causing it to be shut down in 2018. With plans to redevelop the area as urban green space and public park, arch out loud challenged designers to submit their vision for a scheme which incorporates new attitudes to waste, and redefines how the stadium typology can serve surrounding communities.

WASTE (competition) may turn out to make its biggest contribution to the field by bringing together a set of documents that reveal how architecture is being shaped by and is responding to ecological thinking at the present moment. A preference for infrastructure over typology, landform over building form and systems over objects was evident throughout. Many projects also reflect a broad reconceptualization of building materials in relation to resources as opposed only to structural attributes.

-Sylvia Lavin, WASTE Competition juror

Below, we have republished the winning entry and three runners up. Recent arch out loud competitions have included the question “What is the future of HOME?” and ideas for the residential development of one of the last remaining sections of the undeveloped Mumbai coastline.

Details on past and upcoming competitions can be found on the initiative’s website here.

First Place: Bamboo Stadium

Iulia Dorobanțu and Lucas Monnereau / ENSA Paris Belleville

Save this picture! First Place: Bamboo Stadium. Image via arch out loud

Description: The stadium is the natural meeting place for the neighborhood: an evolutive, flexible and transformable infinite bamboo based-unit structure. The bamboo seeded on the site becomes the local building material. A mix of social spaces, dedicated to enjoying the sport on game days, as well as dwellings and local public programs, to be occupied all year by the local community, blend together in the small-scale system. The aggregation can grow in each direction to meet all needs of various situations, with a potential multiplication at the scale of the neighborhood or city.

+ 29

Runner-Up: Yoruba Waste Compound

Ernesto Urquizar Quesada & Maria Cervantes Lardon / School of Architecture of Granada

Save this picture! Runner-Up: Yoruba Waste Compound. Image via arch out loud

Description: The urban paradox of Lagos is the starting point of our argument. The project is based on the Yoruba compound urban model; a central space protected by a peripheral circulation. In Lagos, there are no typologies. The new non-stadium sinks into the former landfill enhancing the Landscape and facilitating the activity on the superior ring. Inside this excavated void, a ramp crossed the tiers unwrapping them and creating an accessible promenade where new activity happens. A place where informal markets can occur as it grows on the cloverleaves of the big highways. Informal spaces between circulation that held spontaneous activity.

Runner-Up: The Platform

Shengran Zheng, Yuxin Jiang, Yong Kiat Tan & Biqin Li / University of Melbourne

Save this picture! Runner-Up: The Platform. Image via arch out loud

Description: A long-term proposal for Olusosun Landfill, including 3 stages. In the first stage, the megastructure of the "Platform" and Waste to Energy System (WtE system) is built onto the landfill, which enables the construction of the stadium and waste-to-energy process to be conducted at the same time. The waste resource could be reached under the "Platform" for generating energy and electricity for the city of Lagos. In the second stage, the stadium is built with movable structures on the "Platform" as an international football venue. The stadium is meant to be lightweight and economical, and allow sunlight to penetrate through. In the third stage, waste on Olusosun landfill is all consumed and the WtE plant is transformed to a community center and other space according to needs.

+ 29

Runner-Up: Recycle Cooperative Workshop

Vlad Kapustin, Stef Elitsa & Ivan Maximov

Save this picture! Runner-Up: Recycle Cooperative Workshop. Image via arch out loud

Description: In Lagos, people live close to garbage dumps, which immerse the city in deeper problems of ecology and pollution, moreover Lagos is the largest importer of dangerous garbage. Recycle Cooperative Workshop - is a membership-based association of people created to achieve common economic and social goals that meet the needs of Lagos. The main idea of the project - garbage is a resource. It works as a hub for the production of items made of recycled waste. The Cooperative is a hybrid of a recycling plant, workshop, market, social center, and stadium. People can unite, design and fabricate. Products are sold in the workshop market. The Cooperative can serve as an example and form a new attitude towards garbage among people.

+ 29

The jury for the WASTE: Multi-Purpose Stadium competition comprised of:

Neil Denari - Founder, Principal | Neil M. Denari Architects

Joshua Ramus - Founder, President | REX

Zeina Koreitem - Founder, MILLIØNS | Harvard GSD

Thom Moran - Founder, T + E + A + M | University of Michigan Taubman College

Tei Carpenter - Founder, Director, Agency-Agency | Columbia GSAPP

Ahmed ElHusseiny - Founder, AE Superlab

Olalekan Jeyifous - Artist/ Designer, Vigilism.com

Ola-dele Kuku - Architect/ Artist | Ola-dele Kuku Projects

Nate Appleman - Director of Sports + Recreation + Entertainment | HOK

Andrés Jaque - Founder | Office for Political Innovation

Oana Stanescu- Founder, Oana Stanescu Design Studio | Harvard GSD

Sylvia Lavin- Director of Critical Studies, PH.D., & M.A. | UCLA AUD