Cameroon has one of the most successful football teams in Africa and has been selected to host the 33rd edition of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2022. The new Japoma Sport Complex in Douala is one of the main venues hosting the tournament. It has been conceived to promote the local economy and boost elite and community sport activities with a distinctive architectural form designed to delight and inspire. Cameroon is often described as 'Africa in miniature’ due to its rich diversity in climates and vegetation: coast, desert, mountains, rainforest and savannah. This new sports city is located to the east of the city of Douala, which benefits from an ethnically varied population with a rich cultural heritage.
Our design approach was to deliver an architecturally distinctive stadium, which is capable of delivering international class football and athletic events, but which also recognizes the importance of being rooted in its local cultural and physical environment, using appropriate technologies for construction, tournament operation and long-term management and maintenance.
The stadium responds to the sloping site topography, set into the hillside to allow safe, easy to navigate access around the entire bowl. A novel approach is taken to food and beverage and other concessions. Recognizing the local tradition for informal street food rather than more formal catering in Cameroon, a series of lightweight modules are arranged around the outer concourse, allowing for a wide variety of local producers to deliver an authentic semi-outdoor catering experience.
In addition to the 50,000-seat football stadium, the scheme also includes external facilities that will be made available to the public, including an Olympic standard 50-meter aquatics center, football field, four tennis courts, two basketball courts and two volleyball courts.
Client
State of Cameroon
Services
- Lead consultant
- Master planning
- Architecture and design
- Full multidisciplinary engineering
- Visualization and virtual reality
