ABSTRACT

The building type is increasingly one that lives on the boundaries of technological change rather than one that slumbers peacefully through the decades. This chapter focuses on some contemporary proposals for the future of this building type and closes with a series of provocations intended to push forward the collective dialogue about the role of the stadium in the city. The backers behind Boston’s bid to host the Games insist the logic behind a 60,000-person temporary stadium, which has never been undertaken before, is the pursuit of sustainability. Leveraging the opportunities presented by scale and grade shifts in an urban context could allow for any number of programs to be inserted into stadia. Precisely how that might affect the form and operation of the building type is difficult to predict, although a handful of examples in this chapter point to some of the possibilities.