Dubai Sports City appoints internationally renowned architects to design stadia

The company is currently involved in a number of cutting edge international sports stadia projects, including the ongoing refurbishment of the Berlin Olympic stadium due for completion this year.

GMP has been appointed by DSC to design a 10,000 seat multi-purpose indoor arena, a 30,000 capacity cricket stadium, a 40,000 capacity multi-purpose outdoor complex and a field hockey stadium which will hold 10,000 spectators.

"GMP has worked on some of the world's most prestigious projects," explained Khalid Al Zarooni, President, DSC. "At DSC, we hope to create some of the best and most recognisable sporting venues in the world and GMP's expertise in designing international standard, large-scale, unique sporting arenas will help us realise this dream."

The two multi-purpose stadia will be able to cover a huge range of sports. The indoor arena will hold tennis, basketball, volleyball, netball, handball, wrestling, boxing, judo and gymnastics events and ice hockey while the outdoor stadium will be suitable for soccer, rugby and track and field.

"There is little doubt that DSC is an ambitious project and our designs will match this ambition," said Hubert Nienhoff, Partner, GMP. "We believe in content-led architecture, so our primary focus will be to create stadia which will operate effectively as world class venues for world class sporting events."

Construction of all four venues is expected to be completed by 2007. "All playing surfaces and pitch or court dimensions will be pre-approved by the relevant sport's international governing body, in order to guarantee their suitability for international tournaments and competitions", said Balasubramaniam, CEO, Dubai Sports City.