Best Project, Sports/Entertainment: Baku National Stadium
When Azerbaijan decided to build a world-class stadium in the capital city of Baku, the owners gave the design and construction team an extremely aggressive 24-month deadline. The owner-the state oil company of the Azerbaijan Republic, a former Soviet state-assembled an all-star international design and construction team. Heerim Architects & Planners from Seoul, South Korea, led design, working closely with U.S. structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti and Turkish general contractor Tefken Construction. Other key firms on the team hailed from Greece, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Spain.
Using 3D building information modeling to execute a game plan based on parallel design and construction with an architect in South Korea, a structural designer in New York, engineers and contractors in Istanbul, a construction site in Azerbaijan, and detailing and 3D modeling in Turkey, the team met the ultimate challenge: delivering a sparkling 68,000-seat, $640-million stadium for the inaugural European Games, in June 2015.