I’m as baffled as you are that it’s taken so long, but it seems someday we still might get the stadium we’ve all known architecture really needs: Turkey’s Burasapor soccer team, nicknamed the “Green Crocodiles,” could soon be getting an architectural masterpiece, a structure that will rival the greatest palaces of the last 200 years, even outdoing the timeless proportions of the Acropolis. It is a coiling green crocodile with blazing spotlights in its eyes.
Originally proposed back in 2010, the stadium has not yet been constructed — as if the world is simply unprepared for this heroic expression of the warrior spirit.
Every generation — huddle up — every generation, there is a paradigm-shifting project, something that begins as a mere rumour, perhaps, a ray of hope, a daydream, just a hushed whisper between friends, something cautiously tapped between colleagues over chat, a monumental undertaking that could redefine everything that came before.
Think of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Interstate, the moon landing. This 1.6 million square-foot wild animal, its mouth stretched terrifyingly open as if to feed on the very minds of the opposing team, causing epidemics of hemorrhaging and outbreaks of own-goals, is such a project. Turn away, world, this creature says, when you look long at the crocodile, the crocodile also looks back at you. [Sozuneri Architects via Nick Arvin]