Designing a memorial for the deceased in the construction sites of the World Cup stadiums in Qatar
WEEK architecture studio based in France and Chile designed the monument.
This monument addresses the number of deaths reported on construction sites for the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadiums in Qatar.
This will be held from November 20 to December 18, 2022.
Design features
The twisting orthogonal tower was first unveiled in 2014 and is now a high-end tower,
dubbed the Qatar World Cup Monument.
It was formed according to the number of migrant workers who lost their lives during the construction sites of the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadiums in Qatar.
The height of the tower is 4.4 kilometers, and the tower consists of twisted concrete units.
Each concrete block represents one of the migrant workers who lost their lives while building these stadiums.
And the tower grows, as the number of workers who lose their lives increases,
so WEEK studio expected to erect a memorial 1.5 kilometers high,
if the number of deaths did not slow down.
Originally developed as a shorter tower, the architects updated the tower’s height before the tournament opened, based on the latest reported death toll.
In the past decade, more than 6,500 migrant workers lost their lives between 2010 and 2020 in Qatar.
This is according to the Guardian article, which reveals statistics on the number of deaths of migrant workers in 2021.
While the statistics showed that most of the deaths of migrant workers were detected from different countries,
such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
While FIFA claimed in March 2021 that 37 deaths had been recorded since construction began in 2014.
Three of these were work-related deaths at FIFA World Cup sites and 34 were non-work-related deaths.
Work-related deaths among FIFA World Cup workers
Based on the latest figures, the studio designed the height of the tower to be 4.4 kilometers,
which accounts for the number of 6,751 deaths on construction sites.
Since the end of 2010 and the appointment of Qatar as the host country to organize the 2022 World Cup,
no independent body has been able to defend workers’ rights or count deaths.
The right to strike and trade unions does not exist, and the only numbers available are those of the Qatari authorities.
Between 2010 and 2019, 15,021 foreigners of all ages and professions died in Qatar,
but this number is not officially linked to the construction of World Cup stadiums.
However, most of them are relatively young,
healthy migrant workers who have passed their medical examinations in their country of origin.
When they reach Qatar, they die suddenly of natural causes, heart failure or respiratory failure.
This is not a cause of death for the health experts consulted by Amnesty International.
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