Post #4: Soccer City Stadium.

Built in 1989, the First National Bank Stadium, called Soccer City, is one of the most popular in the world. This football arena is located in Johannesburg. In 2009, it underwent significant reconstruction. In 2010 South Africa hosted the 2010 football World Cup. Since then, the Soccer City stadium looks like a calabash, an African pot, and the lighting resembles a fire under the pot. With a total number of almost 100,000 seats, the Soccer City is one of the biggest football stadium in the world.

urmounting the new stadium is the calabash, or ‘melting pot’ of African culture. Its façade is made up of a unique cladding system, developed as fibre-cement panels that could be produced using locally-sourced materials, and which gives a unique African flavour to the appearance of the building. The pot is punctured by open panels that provide natural ventilation and, when the stadium is lit up, mimic the starlit African sky.