Reading the Game

Entries in soccer (4)

Friday
Jul162010

Organic Invented Fields

Arguably one of the reasons soccer has become the world's game, is it's accessibility. All you need is some space and something roundish, and the game's fluid nature can adapt to your local geography and architecture. We found a beautiful set of photos that.

O Campo is a photography series by Joachim Schmid, concerning irregular Brazilian football fields. These organic invented fields are resulting products of vacant/waste lands together with a rising demand for playgrounds. A pure example of contextual urbanism, where the built existing context is the one who fixes the rules.

As the photographer states: the desire for playing the game has clearly surpassed and ignored the limitations of natural topography and FIFA’s laws.

[all images> joachim schmid photographing brazilian football fields via multicipios brasil]

+ Via Deconcrete

 

Tuesday
Jul132010

Pitch:Africa. A Water Harvesting Initiative

The architects Jane Harrisson and David Turnbull, of New Jersey’s Atopia Research Inc., have found a new solution to Africa’s acute water shortage that also capitalizes on the continent’s latest sporting craze. Two years in the making, Pitch:Africa is a low-cost football (soccer to Americans) stadium that doubles as a rainwater harvesting and distribution system.  A cheery blue, semi-permeable polymer playing field allows rainwater to seep through and pool in cisterns. Considering that parts of Africa receive between three and six feet of rain in one season, this can add up to over a million liters of water a year. The water can then be passed through a ceramic filtration system, to be used for a variety of purposes.Read more....

Wednesday
Jun232010

True Passion for the Game

Although far from the crowds, lights, and vuvuzelas of the World Cup, amputees from civil war torn Sierra Leone and Liberia still live out there dreams of soccer glory. Read their story here.

Thursday
Jun032010

The World Cup, Apps for that

Technology is set to meet soccer at a smartphone intersection when the World Cup begins June 11. This is a leap forward in technology with a clutch of iPhone apps that will enable fans to track games, watch highlights and glean information on players and teams.

Apple’s United States App Store offers a collection of World Cup and soccer-related programs. Nearly all of the apps (some of which also run on the iPad, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Palm, Android and other devices) provide team-by-team analysis, match schedules, background on the stadiums being used for the tournament and a promise to provide real-time scoring updates once the tournament begins.....Read more here