Tangram’s Qatar World Cup Stadium Sculpts the Desert Wind to Provide Passive Cooling

The new <a href="http://inhabitat.com/qatar-unveils-designs-for-sustainable-stadiums-for-the-2022-fifa-world-cup/" target="_blank">FIFA stadium for the Qatar 2022 World Cup</a> will “sculpt” the desert region’s winds and combine them with nearby water sources to provide passive-<a href="http://inhabitat.com/hydro-house-concept-relies-on-evaporative-cooling/hydro-house-2/" target="_blank">evaporative cooling</a> for the entire structure. The system will use no electricity, and it will also function as a central cooling facility for the neighboring community when it’s not being used as a sports venue. Recently unveiled by architecture firm <a href="http://tangrameurope.com/">Tangram Gulf</a>, the design will incorporate various energy-saving techniques that draw from Qatar’s vernacular architecture.

The 80,000-seater stadium features traditional Badgheer openings which enable capturing and manipulating the wind.

These are created in the outer layer of the stadium and positioned to allow the effective harnessing of hot winds to create air currents across the structure. In order to stop the hot air from pushing out the cool air the designers developed a skin system of punching panels.

The skin was designed by combining the Fibonacci logarithms and the cooling mechanisms used by the desert lizards in the Western Region Desert-the lizards move their scales to direct wind over their bodies to accelerate cooling.

The punched louvers allow the wind to be directed away from the open top of the stadium in a similar way as simple fluid mechanics help push sailing winds forward on modern yachts.

The colonnade helps to create cooling through both thermal mass and the Venturi effect which accelerates air pressure across colonnade structures.

To help create and direct cool winds across the stadium at the correct velocity for the cooling to take place, the designers introduced the Qanat-traditional water management system.

It is positioned beneath the terraces of the stadium in the form of storage tanks which provide a constant supply of cooled water to the stadia “lake”.