The 2022 FIFA World Cup brought one of the most commented stadiums back into the spotlight. For those who haven't had the chance to see it, the big football event, which will be held in Qatar, introduced them to Al-Wakrah.
Al-Wakrah Stadium was designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid together with the firm AECOM. The stadium features a post-modernist and neo-futuristic design. The look was inspired by the sails of traditional Dhow boats used by pearl divers who drifted through the currents of the Persian Gulf.
However, people have long compared the lines imitating the sails of boats to the female genitalia, to be exact, the labia. "I'm no expert, but I think they're labia," Cosmopolitan sex and relationship editor Anna Breslaw previously told Equire. "Any intelligent person will realize that the building looks exactly like a large vagina," wrote the site Jezebel.
In 2013, Zaha Hadid, one of the icons of architecture, considered the comments as "disgraceful" and "ridiculous". "It is really shameful that they claim such nonsense. What do they say? Anything with a hole in it is a vagina? This is ridiculous,” she told TIME.
Hadid suggested that the comments would not have been made if the architect had been male: "Honestly, if a guy had done this project..."
A vagina-shaped stadium would be a risky project in a country with strict rules like Qatar, which recently banned the consumption of alcohol in stadiums where matches will be held.
However, that's why art is beautiful – because it's open to interpretation.
