Speculative Design for Sports in the Face of Climate Change
For this project, we are supposed to make an environment that deals with change over time and allows people to continue to feel connect with it for longer. My goal for this project is to confront sustainability within sports in regards to permanence of sports facilities that tends to negatively affect the environment and produce a large sum of waste.
Initial Research
Repurposing Olympic Stadiums
When we first started the project, I was drawn to the idea of repurposing Olympic stadiums. I’ve been a fan of the Olympics since I was a kid, but growing older and more aware of the effects of climate change as well as watching as resources upon resources get poured into the games has made me more apprehensive about when the world won’t be able to handle another Olympics, or any major sports event for that matter. The biggest waste of time, money, and resources in my opinion, is the stadium because they cost billions of dollars for cities to build and often times they only get used once or maybe a few times by the city. My hopes for this project was to find new purposes for stadiums that have been abanodoned by their cities in a way that can beneficial to the environment and benefit communities in some way.
Design Ideas
Terrace Farming
My first idea was to utilize the tiered structure of stadiums to build giant terrace farms. The stadium could be covered on top with glass to increase the humidity so that plants from warmer weather climates can be grown. Since the stadiums are close to the city, they could be used to feed the population there. This would help lessen the need for goods imported from far away, lowering GHG emissions.
Conservatory
My next next idea was to make a conservatory out of the stadium. It’s similar to the first idea in terms of confining plants in the stadium and concealing it with a glass top so plants can grow year-round, but in this case, the space would act as an attraction instead giving people people who live in the cities a reason to go visit these stadiums again and feel connected with nature without having to travel too far.
After doing research on this idea, I found an instillation that Klaus Littmann made in which he planted a forest of trees inside a stadium to mimic an illustration made by Max Peintner in 1970. The purpose of the two artists’ works were to warn people that nature may one day become an attraction and that we may look at trees the same way we look at animals at the zoo. Even though I think that it is important for people to observe nature and I understand that some people don’t have access to nature as others, there is something innappropriate about containing and regulating the growth of plants for the sake of entertainment. Nature is beautiful, but putting a bunch of pretty plants in this kind of space really cheapens it and seems very unnatural, contradicting its purpose. It also made me realize that adding plants to the stadium will not change the fact that stadiums are still going to be built and abandoned, so it’s for the best that I try another approach to the problem.
Steering in Another direction
My initial goal was to bring new and sustainable purpose to abandoned stadiums/olympic facilities for the cities they belong to. As I researched the repurposing of stadiums, I realized that the main reason stadiums for Olympic games don’t get repurposed is because host cities can’t afford to have them repurposed or keep them maintained after the games games. These cities expect to make a lot of money by hosting the games, but due to high bids, high costs of constructing facilities, and low return due to the Olympic Committee collecting 70% of the host cities’ earnings, many of them end up in poor financial situation after the games and can’t afford to transform Olympic Parks into useful spaces.
New Goal
After watching the video above, I became aware of another major concern revolving around the Olympics and climate change, winter sports. Decreased global snow coverage caused by rising temperatures, there are fewer places in which the Winter Olympics can be held. Sports like boarding and skiing may become less popular as climate change progresses and they become less accessible to the public.
My new idea is to design a Winter Olympics for the desert. Boarding and skiing events would be done on sand and skating events on plastic ice in order to reduce the amount GHGs produced from the games and accomodate for the lack of natural snow around the world.
This design could act as a temporary (possibly permanent) fix for the Winter Games that would allow the games to continue as the world confronts the major contributors to climate change in the next however many decades.
Pros:
- sand doesn’t melt like snow
- less deforestation/habitat loss than building in snowy areas
- less soil erosion from bulldozing
- less water use (man-made snow)
- new cities can get invlolved in winter Olympics
Is preserving the Winter Olympics really necessary?
Above are the 26 countries that have ever made the podium for the Winter Olympics.
The purpose of the Olympics in my mind is to bring the world together through witnessing or participating in friendly competition. If a large portion of the world doesn’t have access to these kinds of sports, then what is the point of having this global competition other than to make more money off of people? Any attempt to preserve the Winter Games seems unnecessary since a large portion of the world is already excluded from being a part of the games since they don’t have access to snowy climates. Creating a Desert Olympics would make boarding skiing, bobsledding, etc. more accessible to other parts of the world, but at the same time, it might just cause the same issue of inclusivity but with different countries.
Popularizing Desert Sports
My new goal is to popularize desert sports the creation of spaces that facilitate/encourage participation in them. I want to make either a park or resort where people can come to do sand skiing/boarding. From my research, I found that many people who tried sandboarding felt that it was the kind of activity a person should only try once because it was difficult to do on your own, feels unsafe when done without gear, and getting back to the top is tedious.
For my space, I want to address the issues above in order to make the negative aspects of sandboarding less memorable to the overall expreience and give people more incentive to return. I also want the space to have very little negative impact on the environment so I don’t want there to be any permanent structures put in place, or air conditioning, electricity/irrigation running to the camp from the city. I want the camp to be easily movable so that the space can be moved to different parts of the desert and also in case the space needs to be taken down due to a sandstorm.
Presenting My Research
In class we breifly presented the our research on our projects that we had done so far and told the class where we were in terms of designing our spaces. I went through the research that I explained above and how I got from one design idea to the next. It wasn’t necessary to show the process of how you got to your final idea, but I did this because I wasn’t sure of where I landed for my final idea and wanted to know if I should go back to something else in my research or continue going with what I landed
Feedback:
- Winter Olympics in the desert could be an interesting thing to still look into. Think about how materials such as glass (from sand) could be used to make structures (bobsleigh course)
- Consider all terrain boards rather than park so people can decide where they want to board
- Consider what parts of the park will be sustainable
- Stop using the word scrap
Take Away:
After considering what was said about the Desert Olympics idea and looking into different all terrain boards/boards modified to act like those from another sport, I think that I still want to do a sandboarding park or camp. I did do a lot of research into all terrain boards and found some really interesting ones. The ones above are skateboards that mimic the experience of snowboarding. It could’ve been interesting to do something with training athletes from countries that don’t have access to snow with these boards, but it would require knowing more about these boards and the conditions of snowboarding than I am capable of.
Talking with Jonathan and Steve after the presentation helped me to figure out how I should go about designing for the park. They suggested I consider the aesthetic and feel of the park as well as the contents of the park. Steve suggested I have it be a camp rather than a park and think about temporary structures such as yurts rather than tents to make the space temporary/movable.
Storyboard:
I made the storyboard so I could get an overall idea of what I want the experience to be like for people at the camp. It helped me to figure out which resources and people I needed to included as well as what spaces I needed to designate for certain activities.
Initial Camp Map
From taking note of the resources required for the activities in the storyboard to occur and looking at complaints people made about sandboarding I was able to make a camp map of the resources my camp would provide.
Environmentally Friendly Aspects of the Camp:
Yurts and tents provide housing that doesn’t require building into the ground. This means that it’ll be easier to replace parts damaged by sand,wind,etc. and that less of the natural environment is being damaged through them being there.
Temporary bathrooms and outdoor showers mean less water is wasted in using the restroom or bathing since no irrigation is required. It also means less building in the ground from irrigation. Also, it causes less spreading of disease and harm to nature than going to the bathroom on the ground.
Solar panels will be used to supply power to the yurts for people who need to charge their devices to take photos or videos. The solar panels will be used to keep food cold in either a fridge or cooler.
A campfire will be used to cook food because it will help bring campers together around the fire and because it uses less energy and non-sustainable resources than cooking appliances (grill, spit, pots, and pans).
Reusable utensils and plates will be used since they will produce less waste than disposable ones.
Transportation:
Dune buggys will be used to travel to the camp and to travel back up dunes while sandboarding.
Feedback
After presenting for the second time, Jonathan suggested that I have the sandboarding spread out farther along the desert so that people can experience different dunes and see more of the desert which is very different than my idea in which I kept everyone really close to the camp and only allowed them to go down one dune. His way expands the journey which I like.
Also, when designing the 3D animation for the final, I shouldn’t design the interiors of the yurts or tents. Explaining the purpose of them is enough and I shouldn’t focus on the aesthetics of the space since it is a camp and camps are fairly utilitarian.
New Course
In the sandboarding tour above that I designed for the camp, campers travel to 3 different dunes starting with a beginners dune where instructors teach the basics of sandboarding/sandskiing and then work their way up to more difficult dunes. I like this a lot better than the first one because people will get to try out more dunes, travel more, and feel like they are learning more through the experience.
Itinerary:
I made the itinerary primarily to break down how much time could be spent at each dune before it got dark, however it also became helpful in figuring out how long people would be able to stay the next day since staff will need time to prepare for another group arriving. I already planned out most of the activities in the activity stage, so making the itinerary was primarily just to put a time to when everything would occur
Final Animation
The final animation compiles the itinerary, camp map, and course map into one video so that you can better see visualize the sequence of events and the spaces the events take place in. This is helpful especially when depicting the different dunes because they have dimension and you can see them from different angles unlike with the two maps I made.
*Animation*