Throw the FIFA pitch requirements handbook out the window. In hodgepodge Bangkok, football fields don’t even need to be rectangular.
A Thai real estate developer has built four misshapen pitches in Khlong Toei, an extremely densely-populated area of the capital where the proliferation of high and low-rise apartments have left little space for parks or play areas.
Cj Worx, the advertising agency employed by developerAP Thailand to run the Unusual Football Field project, said the area had “numerous asymmetrical spaces” scattered around.
The concept of the project, its creators said, was to transform irregularly-shaped areas into practical football fields that still allow fair play. Each pitch is painted brick-red and with markings in grey.
“We hope that other communities will adapt this idea to change their own irregular space,” the agency said.
“This unusual football field has proven that designing outside boundaries can help foster creativity used to develop these useful spaces.” One pitch curves around a discarded shipping container on one side and a building on the other.
Bangkok, a city of eight million built over a swamp, is desperately running out of space, with new malls and residential projects often destroying poorer communities and food markets.
