TOWARDS A PRO-ACTIVE SPORTS STADIUM INFRASTRUCTURE IN NIGERIA Paper BY CHUKWUEMEKA EJIKE | Page 12

be spanned, to be able to have roof covered arena of hundreds of feet. The shapes of
stadia have varied widely according to the variety of uses for which they were built.
Some are rectangular with curved corners, whereas others are elliptical or U-shaped.
A significant development of the mid-20th century was the Astrodome, built in 1965 in
Houston, Texas. Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the first tiered stadium to provide
column-free views from all seats (1959), followed by Shea Stadium in New York, which
added field seat sections that rotate around the stadium to permit conversion from a
baseball to a football arrangement (1964; demolished 2008). Several other outstanding
stadiums have been built.
The concept of an enclosed stadium together with the desire for greater capacities has led
to the search for improved materials and construction techniques. Modern technology,
including that developed in the aerospace industry, already possesses techniques for
covering spans of hundreds of feet. Such is the potential of the modern stadium design
concept as completely roof covered stadia have been built e.g. Docklands cricket stadium
Australia. It is therefore very realistic to see today’s roofed stadia, with their arrays of
restaurants, exhibition halls, and other auxiliaries, as the forerunners of completely
roofed, weather-controlled cities (Angelo spampinato 2012. History of stadium)
A LOOK AT SOME PROPOSED AND RECENTLY BUILT STADIUMS
The new approach to city developments puts stadia at the centre of the evolutionary
process of contemporary cities, as key elements in development and new centres of
attraction. A look at some of the proposed stadia for the upcoming world cup 2022, in
Qater.