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this one is called doha port stadium. you know what it reminds me of? the lagoon outside of the bellagio in las vegas. i think it would be really cool if they put water jets and colored lights all around the port and the sides of the stadium and then timed shows every fifteen minutes to celine dion songs. visually, this stadium reminds me of the pokemon bulbasaur, which is this turtle thing with a giant bulb on its back. you can google it. i guess the sides light up any color, so it would be really something if they times the color changes to the lights in the water jets and the fireworks for nighttime shows.
also, cruise ships! i would love to stay on a cruise ship looking out over the harbor. it would be one with really thin curtains and i would get really annoyed by all the color changes in the middle of the night and, while i'm lying awake from the light blinking into my cabin, i'd think up lots of quips about staying in a red light district to get laughs at breakfast.
after the WC: tear this monstrosity down and build a 53-floor resort hotel with nickel slots, barry mannilow nightly, and a four story gift shop. i would totally stay there.
every easter as a kid my mom used to put all my easter swag - chocolate peanut butter eggs, stuffed bunnies, peeps - in a straw basket. they were multi-colored and made of this wood straw and looked exactly like this stadium. it's my favorite of the whole bunch and i think it's breathtaking. i want to go to doha just to see this stadium. i hope they make miniature models of this all the doha stadia. then i'll put it on my amazon wish list and get it for my birthday and put it on a shelf in my bedroom and cover it with clothes and never look at it.
after the WC: qatar is all about reinvention and lucrative corporate sponsorships. this puppy is a surefire hit as the centerpiece stadium in a gay games bid. if that's a no go, dismantle it and move it to fellow micro-monarchy luxembourg - it's too good to pass up.
i live in los angeles and i somehow manage to get all the shelter magazines delivered even though i've never requested any. anyway, they're all about ridiculously uncomfortable furnishings that throwback to '60s mod. this looks like something wretched eames would have conjured up as a bed that rich people would have bought even though you're constantly rolling off it and you have to sleep clutching the edge of the mattress so you don't fall off. it's supposed to look like an ark or something, which i guess it sorta does if you look at it from the right angle and don't know what an ark looks like.
after the WC: too obvious. it's an opera house waiting to happen.
i have a filthy mind, but apparently i'm hardly alone. this really does look like ladybits with teeth across it. in a really wealthy society like qatar where all the rich people are extremely repressed sexually, i think a stadium like this was bound to happen. there's so much sexual tension here. it typifies the 'view from inside,' which every qatari is too embarrassed to admit they really want to explore. qataris and 14 year old boys have a lot in common it seems. it's disgusting and sick and reminds me of the roseanne episode where DJ didn't know what a pervert was. it's the same thing. they wouldn't get it even if you tried to explain. but at least you get it so we can kind of sit here and giggle a little. we should all go to a game here and just giggle the whole time. "look at the teeth!" jesus christ. if ever there was a country that was more in need of jezebel.com.
after the WC: i'd like women to take back the night - and this awful stadium. seriously. get it out of here. gross. gross. gross. i wrote a period joke that wasn't all that funny but it was too gross to leave. gross. gross. gross.
this one will be a little esoteric if you're not christian (what's with all the christian themed stadia??). but you know how every year you put up the tree, just about this time, and as presents arrive in the mail you put them, unwrapped, under it? well this stadium is exactly like that gorgeous present you get from your aunt donna in shiny gold paper tied with an iridescent green ribbon and it's so beautiful you put it under your tree front and center, in front of the wisemen and the porcelain nativity scene and all the other presents you've gotten and the ones you've wrapped yourself in $1.99 wrapping paper with awful cartoon snowflakes that is so cheap the colors actually bleed a little out the lines. and then you turn the lights all off and put the tree on and position that one golden gift just so that the tree lights shine off it and you put on james taylor christmas carols and admire the atmosphere and every so often glance at your shiny, gorgeously wrapped gift. then christmas morning comes and after you've unwrapped the gifts from everyone else who is actually present, someone says "why don't you open aunt donna's gift?" and you say, trying to play it off like you had totally forgotten about it, "ohhh yeaaahhh." then you make a few comments about how pretty it is and delicately untie the bow and get a butter knife and cut away from the scotch tape and slowly unwrap the present because the paper is so nice you can't be seen tearing into it, and then you say "oh this paper is so nice. i'm going to save it" and for that moment you really mean it. but then it's just a coffee table book that you'll flip through tomorrow morning and then it'll go on your bookshelf and you won't look at it until you move and then when you're supposed to be packing you'll look through it again and remember how carefully you set that paper aside, but then an hour later when everyone is cleaning up the wrapping paper you glance at the golden paper and green ribbon and think "when the hell am i ever going to wrap a gift with this? and i have to save it, and it'll get wrinkled in my closet, which is practically stuffed." so in the end you just throw it out like the ugly snowflake paper.
yeah, this stadium is just like that.
after the WC: some things are better left unwrapped.
so it's toward the end of the doha 2022 planning committee meeting and everyone just wants to go home because it's 7 pm and the meeting was only supposed to run until 6:30 and you totally have to go home and break in about five new pakistani child servants, and they always end up stealing the good silverware anyway until you tell them they can't leave the country until they return it and then someone says "so we need one last stadium." and everyone thinks "oh ****" because it's taken, like, 8 hours to come up with 11 stadiums. so to make things easier you just have a big brainstorming session about what's worked in the past and throw in a lot of marketing-friendly buzz words like synergistic inspiration and client-centric collaboration when all you really want to do is rip something off and go home. then someone is talking about beijing and the bird's nest and how popular that was, and you think "oh perfect!" so you sketch out a really sloppy birds nest and fill in the holes and make a few jagged edges and call it modern and bolt out the door at 7:35 and approve the first sketch-up that comes in because you're embarrassed that the idea has even made it this far and now it's in the marketing materials and it's too late to go back now. plus there are 11 other stadiums so, yeah. no one will even notice.
after the WC: slice in half for an open-air amphitheater with killer acoustics.
this stadium would have looked out of date in 1987. it's so lazy i wonder if it wasn't originally created for a GB design competition. honestly, i think that would have produced a better result. the next contest should be redesign this to something passable. every stadium should be gorgeous. no exceptions. why do you think we're suffering through 119 degree heat and DOHA for god's sake? for gorgeous stadia and ONLY gorgeous stadia. redo.
after the WC: give it to africa, if they'll have it. i wouldn't take it if i was swaziland and i could sell it for scrap to buy 50 new wives.
aand we're back to gorgeous. stunning stadium. it's nothing all that special, but sometimes doing something really well is just as satisfying. the manicured gardens are heavenly and the layered stained-glass and petals effect is so beautiful. it's a work of art. i chose this picture because it's a real chance to create an environment around the stadium like the doha port one. they should create a universal citywalk with lots of shops, restaurants, a hard rock cafe, and t-shirt kiosks. this is where everyone in al-wakra would go and hang out on warm summer nights looking up at the stars and buying frappachinos for $7.
after the WC: i've been saying this way too much, but don't touch this one. just leave it for a while. don't take it apart until it gets to serve as the main photo for the inevitable 2024 new york times story on doha's world cup white elephants. sample line: during the world cup, tourists had flocked here in droves, snatching up kitchy souvenir t-shirts and high-priced concessions as quickly as they could be replaced. now, 24 months on, qatar's once bustling al wakar stadium boasts only shuttered stands and dwindling visitors.
except it will all be in one sentence and you'll have to read it twice.
so this is one of those ideas that seems impossibly brilliant until marketing gets a hold of it. the possibilities are endless: you could flash game highlights on the screen - think of that improbable game winning goal with only seconds to spare - and breaking world news, sanitized appropriately of course. but then marketing asks for only a sixth - a sixth! - of the space for major corporate sponsors, and, hey, maybe even fifa who were such good sports about not probing to deep into that whole corruption thing. so you say, oh okay, a sixth, that's 18 percent. i can live with that. but then sprint and samsung wants to unveil a new smart phone right at the world cup, and that's a pretty big deal 'cause they didn't have to do that, right? so you promise them a third of the screen time for one night 'cause it's a BFD. but then mcdonalds was like, wait, we can do that? and home depot and nike throw an absolute fit that no one bothered to tell them and here they are shelling out millions to play by the rules. so then to appease them you have to give them each a third and then half the screen becomes advertisements and then it creeps to two thirds, and pretty soon the only thing on the entire stadium that's not an ad is a tiny little ticker that advertises the results of the matches. but then marketing discovers that too and sells ads in the ticker after every score and, of course, sprint and nike are going to need the WHOLE screen for their huge video takeovers. but they'll pay for the premium and suddenly it's not your screen anymore.
after the WC: i'd like this destroyed - better yet never realized - and the creators exterminated in case any american sports stadiums figure out how to replicate this technology cheaply, tyvm.
so this one is called qatar university stadium and i could have sworn there was already a university stadium before? and i don't know how many stadia qatar universities need for a country that isn't particularly good at any sport (i think lichtenstein has won more olympic medals). anyway the outside looks like when you buy gold jewelery from the oriental trading company and after you touch it the gold polish rubs off and it turns green. and you can just imagine how much fun it will be to walk toward a shiny metal stadium in 130 degree heat every day with the sun glaring off it so that even with sunglasses it's unbearable to look at. you won't even notice that it's got circles and diamonds and lots of islamic design elements built right in. the guardian called this stadium "marginally the smallest" in doha. i would call it marginally good looking.
after the WC: i bet you could literally fashion about a billion gold looking smiley face rings from the oriental trading company by dismantling this hunk of junk.
Edited by krow, 29 November 2011 - 12:26 AM.
:lol:!
