What makes Anfield better than Wembley? Why did Juventus fans hate the Stadio delle Alpi?And why are West Ham fans unhappy?Architects and design experts offer some answers
By Sam Diss for MUNDIAL, Guardian Sport Network
I’m a fan of the West Ham. Es beautiful, but broken. It has hosted the biggest British sporting event of the last 50 years, a grandiose and brilliant Olympic Games, but it cannot host a lower-level Premier League match. This £500 million stadium sparkles in the sun, but it’s full of gaps, gaps, missing pieces, big cannons between prefabricated grandstands that are covered, almost literally, with burgundy plastic sheeting. Stadium disorders aren’t just physical; they are also psychological. It doesn’t look like a football field because it’s not. One wonders: what makes a football stadium wonderful?
Fields expand to fit your team’s identity. Character is more important than capacity or having a technologically complex room. You know it when you see it or feel it: that feeling of being tied only to geography but to history. “Liverpool is one of the clubs that has a strong identity,” says Professor Murray Fraser of London’s Bartlett School of Architecture. “When you walk through Anfield, it’s very evident the ‘church’ of the network that surrounds it. I discovered this amazing the first time I went there and saw the houses around. People who live in this domain see the stadium every day, they can see Anfield every day when they move around the city, and that creates a huge sense of identity.
There are many reasons for similar emotions of civic pride and respect. Located right in the centre of Burnley, Turf Moor feels worn out and hard-earned, with its empty dressing rooms and wooden seats, typical of a team that has risen from the back of the league. Thirty miles to the south, Manchester United’s giant Old Trafford still feels part of the community, covered in red-brick houses along Sir Matt Busby Way, a giant club known for its overall grandeur and long-standing reliance on local talent.
There’s the studied continentalism of Celtic Park and the almost parodic British character of Ibrox. Dortmund’s mythical yellow wall stretches into the sky and hits opposing groups as they attack the goal. In the Bombonera de Boca, a D-shaped box with a giant half-bowl and a simple, flat stand, the noise resonates in the curve and resonates in the opposite stand, evoking more a concert hall than a box, compatible with equipment. Better known for its exciting atmosphere than for its football.
It’s simple to dismiss the new stadiums as mere physical manifestations of what’s going on in today’s game, where every bell and whistle is an affront to the charm and truth of the game we love. But those lands grow and mutate as the game progresses. Become with the wider culture and network of an area, even if there has to be something genuine that enthusiasts can hold on to.
“As far as the design procedure goes,” says architect Christopher Lee. “It’s about understanding what a club’s DNA is, who its supporters are, and what the nuances and traditions are, whether it’s in East London or North Mexico. “He worked at the Emirates Stadium, the Millennium Stadium (with Europe’s first movable roof) and has been in the centre of Tottenham Hotspur’s new pitch.
“Identity is very important and can be lost,” she says. That’s why, with Tottenham’s new stadium, we’re looking for a way to break it down: other people who were previously in the south will have come to the new stadium. grandstand or in the north stand, with the games consistent and sung. This happened in between, and it led to a bit of an evolution in creating engineering-focused seating to check and create a more original identity. Until recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was virtually no “stadium architecture. “It was an engineering activity and it was thought to be an engineering activity, and developers were guys who tended to build bridges. It was a very pragmatic approach.
Pragmatism is no longer enough. Great stadiums want to resonate with the local community. The stadium’s location in the city can make or break a breakthrough: there’s the London Stadium, located very pragmatically in the middle of a park, far from the population, thank you. to the security measures imposed by the Olympic Games and the former Juventus. The Stadio delle Alpi is actually one of the worst stadiums ever owned by a club of this length.
The never-used running track, the terrible views, and the remote location of Turin did not motivate enthusiasts. The 67,000-seat box was only about a third full. During a Coppa Italia match against Sampdoria in 2001–02, only 237 enthusiasts showed up. It was demolished in 2008, just 18 years after it opened.
The Municipal Stadium of Braga, in northwestern Portugal, is carved out of granite facing Mount Castro, with two enchanting-looking stands, one of rock with the status of a kop and the sprawling city of Braga on the other. The San Nicola Stadium in Bari is a simple homage to the ancient amphitheatre. With an antique look, with its design composed of 26 concrete “petals”, the stadium does not look at all like the dominant grounds of Serie A; the design is responsive and airy, with enthusiasts ensconced around its upper floors, making the most of the sun on the Adriatic Sea coast.
Then there’s the Allianz in Munich. Designed by the prominent Swiss company Herzog
“It’s a very undeniable concept that acts as an urban landmark,” Murray says of Allianz. “If Bari’s design was the amphitheatre and its simplicity, Bayern’s design is the reinvention of the cathedral: a wonderful fitness centre being part of the city. I think the most successful stadiums are the ones that address architectural bureaucracy with real clarity. You want to determine what kind of terrain you want to create and then stick to that.
Herzog’s project.
These stages, in the short or long term, will not please each and every one of them. For every fan who marvels at the new design, there’s another who needs to go back to the old days, butt bust and all. “Nostalgia abounds in football,” says Owen Pritchard, former editor of the design bible It’s Nice That. “The era of meatloaf and Bovril will definitely end in no time. To some extent, this deserves to be so. Football tickets are expensive. It would be if you paid more than £40 to sit behind a pole in a squeaky stadium. There’s a romance about the days gone by in football but, frankly, other people rarely say it was fucking dangerous.
Nostalgia is warm and cozy, a blanket. We can worry, obsess, and mythologize each and every component of the afterlife because we know it can’t bite us again. Our nostalgia for stadiums is the same: the Boleyn Ground was perfect, the old Wembley, the dog track with a football pitch in the middle – it was perfect. They say don’t meet your heroes. You can’t do that anymore because they’ve all been knocked down. It’s safer that way. But it’s vital to have that nostalgic thread in the new stages: anything that connects you to the afterlife (no matter how distorted and mythologized that afterlife may be) is essential. When Arsenal proposed moving from Highbury to the Emirates, it conveyed that sense of culture proved to be a challenge for architects.
“Arsenal had been at Highbury since 1908,” says Lee. It’s a much-loved stadium, a lovely stadium, designed by Archibald Leitch, and the grandstand is Art Deco classified. As a local resident, it’s my local team and it’s an amazing build to manage. We spent a lot of time with the club looking to replace it and expand it until finally, and a little sadly, we realised we had to leave Highbury to design what is now the Emirates.
“One school of concept was, ‘Okay, we’re just reflecting a little bit of internal art deco and it’s transitioning to being transferred DNA, kind of a pastiche version. ‘But in reality, what we’ve evolved is the concept of looking to exude an air of permanence and longevity. It was about creating with fabrics that would last as long as Highbury and over time. We invested a lot of time and money in creating a building that would stay there for the next hundred years. years. Fans really got hooked on the concept: it wouldn’t be this thin steel of construction that would age and look bad in 20 years. It’ll just be better when you walk by and see the wear and hand marks on fabrics like this. On the controls of some of the Club’s stands and in the coaches’ boxes, this concept of permanence and longevity is felt. That’s what the club wanted, it was in its roots.
The Emirates have been the subject of some complaints (I once heard someone call it a stadium for other people going to the London Coffee Festival), but that may simply be because enthusiasts don’t like what’s going on on the pitch. It’s a custom-made football stadium, just for them.
Domestic stadiums can be challenging. This has also been true in England, where there is little sense of national identity and where Wembley matches are considered fodder for hikers. The mythologizing around the new Wembley has at times seemed artificial, with a lot of marketing communication but very little culture. to live. It’s one of the most famous stadiums in the world, but visiting Wembley has been an arduous task.
“Millennium Stadium, or whatever it’s called now, has done a wonderful job,” Pritchard says. “It’s right in the centre of Cardiff, opposite the training station and on game day, the whole city recovers. The roads are closed and everything is focused on the game. You can’t miss it. He owns the city. And once inside, the crampedness of the venue means the seats are stiff and enthusiasts are right in the middle of the action. Something like a bad position in the house. But compare it to Wembley. It’s very painful to get there and once there, the atmosphere is as thin as paper. The bowl is too shallow. The whole thing is too smooth;
It is said that instinctive footballers struggle when given too much time to think and perhaps the new Wembley had too much area to play. With too many concepts crammed into one building, the purity of vision was lost. ” Wembley Stadium is a business park,” says Murray. “It’s based on a kind of style — the density of the rooms on the floor, the amenities and the convention room, etc. — to ensure that you make money, but when you look at it, it wraps itself up. All those extra elements swell it up and neutralize it. The joy of going to the stadium was lost.
“The FA calls it ‘the home of football’, but it’s not,” Pritchard adds. “It looks like a basket and it’s made of Brent. “
This article first appeared in WORLD Factor 14. Follow MUNDIAL on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Follow Sam Diss on Twitter.