10.SOWETO
The Football Training Center
In 2009, in the build up to the World Cup in South Africa, we visited Soweto and the location of the Football Training Center. The brief and the budget at the time were modest, ‘fix the pitch and do up the locker rooms’. Yet the opportunity to give the community of Soweto something better, more creative and useful was there, along with the imagination of the Nike Football Design team. 10x the budget later we rebuilt the buildings, installed new football pitches and floodlights and created a lasting legacy for Soweto. The Football Training Centre in 2020 has been expanded to be a multi sport facility and is more focused on female athletes. Since it opened in 2010, Soweto has produced footballers that have played in World Cups and the floodlights have reduced crime in the area dramatically. Sometimes its good to challenge the brief.
