The flexible stadium

The solution was successful. "Commercial" stadia had excellent yield and to exploit the potentials offered by these large audience containers at best, non-static, technologically sophisticated facilities capable of meeting many-sided requirements were chosen. Mobile roofs, stands and playing fields are the basic elements of this generation of new multipurpose and flexible facilities capable of being quickly converted to offer the optimum configuration and the maximum comfort whatever the event to take place, whether sports or non-sporting, may be. The stadium is now open to marketing and to communication: boxes, conference rooms and hospitality areas are now part of the language of new facilities, which in their turn have been converted into lounges for sponsors and companies and designed so as to enhance television broadcasting and to positively reach the high lighting and acoustic standards required by digital television.

In this way, stadia draw many users all the year round and turn into new urban centralities, sometimes capable of acting as catalysts for the processes aimed at their neighbourhoods' redevelopment. (read note 5)

The urban icon

In the last few years stadia have played this urban role more and more, mainly as a joint reaction to a double effect linked with the now great popularity of sports events, not just the most important ones, through the TV and the Internet. On one hand, in order to prevent a spectators' reduction similar to the one that took place at the end of the Fifties, stadia have to help spectators live unique and unrepeatable experiences, offering a wide range of facilities and optimum safety also outside the facility and in the surrounding areas. On the other hand stadia are in the forefront more and more not just during sports events. You just have to click to view photos of a stadium exterior and interior, from all angles. Also by clicking you can take a tour of them with the three-dimensional virtual Google Earth programme. They are now the centres of attraction, are classified by UEFA in main instruments in the challenge among the cities bidding to host the major international sports events. Latest-generation stadia are designed by people who are well aware of this and therefore they feature high-quality architectural and technological systems. Their role as urban icons, new points of reference in the city environment and as displays of identity that are easily recognizable all over the world is nowadays acknowledged. (read note 6)

Towards the future

This new approach puts stadia at the centre of the evolutionary process of contemporary cities, as key elements in development and new centres of attraction. At the same time this calls for strict planning in terms of economic and environmental sustainability, without jeopardizing their sports nature and architectural qualities.

Whatever the next "generation" may be, each stadium is always an exciting architectural challenge and each design marks a new step in the evolutionary process of stadia.

It is a course that was started almost three thousand years ago with the six-hundreds steps of Heracles.

Notes:

Note 1: Rod Sheard, The Stadium: Architecture for the New Global Culture, Periplus Editions, 2005

Note 2: Among the "first stadia" worth mentioning and now upgraded there are Dublin Lansdowne Road (1872), London Stamford Bridge (1877), Liverpool Anfield Road (1884) and the prototypes designed by the Scottish architect Archibald Leitch: Glasgow Ibrox (1899) and Hampden Park (1903), Manchester Old Trafford (1910), which was the first stadium provided with continuous stands linked to each other by means of semicircular stairs that fully encompassed it, and London Highbury (1913), which in 1936 was the first stadium to be provided with a stand on two levels placed one on top of the other. In Europe the most important facilities were in those years London Twickenham (1907) and the first Wembley (1923) stadium with its characteristic Victorian towers in the front, Milano San Siro (1926), Vienna Prater (1931) and Madrid Santiago Bernabeu (1947). The importance of Berlin Olympiastadion (1936) goes beyond sport but the purpose of the facility is to symbolize the political set-up through its robust structure and the strict geometry of its elliptical system. In Italy, Firenze Stadio Comunale (1931) designed by P.L. Nervi is a striking exception in terms of architectural quality.
Large stadia, most of which with elliptical plans, spread in South America: the most important of them are Rio Maracana (1950), capable of welcoming 200 000 spectators crammed into the stadium for the final match of the Football World Cup held in 1950, Montevideo Centenario (1930), Santiago del Chile Nacional (1938), which will then go down in history to be used as jail under the open sky during the days of the Golpe of 1973, Buenos Aires Monumental (1938) and Bombonera (1940), the latter one provided with rectilinear stands.
American football and baseball caught on in the United States. The former is played in large elliptical bowls with continuous tiers, such as Pasadena Rose Bowl (1922), the latter in stadia that are partly open on one side and provided with peculiarly shaped stands following the shape of the playing field. New York Yankee Stadium (1923) is the most famous example.

Note 3: Among the most important "equipped stadia" there are Roma Olympic Stadium (1953), which in 1960 hosted the first Olympic Games broadcasted by TV networks throughout Europe, Barcelona Camp Nou (1957) and Napoli San Paolo (1959), Paris Parco dei Principi (1972) and Munich Olympiastadion, architectural jewel set in the gradients of the Olympic Park designed by G. Behnisch and F. Otto, in intentional contrast to the geometrical rigour of the first German Olympic stadium.
In the other continents Mexico City Azteca Stadium (1966), Johannesburg Ellis Park (1982) and Pyongyang May Day Stadium (1989), which is still nowadays the biggest stadium in the world with its capacity of 150 000 seats, are particularly important.
The second generation of stadia ended with the facilities of Italia '90, which were completed just when Europe was about to start a new phase of upgrading of football stadia. These include Genova Luigi Ferraris (1989), rebuilt on the site of the old facility, Torino Delle Alpi (1990) and Bari San Nicola (1990), the "spacecraft" designed by R. Piano.

Note 4: Alfred McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield (1994) and Bolton Reebok Stadium (1997) are the main "commercial stadia" built in the UK just after the introduction of Taylor Report, but almost all European facilities, starting from those in the UK, were largely upgraded during the Nineties.

Note 5: The main "flexible" stadia provided with mobile roofs are Amsterdam ArenA (1996), Cardiff Millennium (1999), Oita Big Eye (2001) and Toyota City (2001), while in Arnhem Gelredome (1998) and in Gelsenkirchen AufSchalke Arena (2001) it is possible to move the roof and even the pitch, which can be moved outside the facility thus benefiting from natural air and lighting. In Sapporo Dome the pitch is moved and part of tiers are rotated in order to change the facility configuration and to convert it from football stadium into baseball ground, with different playing fields. Mobile stands are also provided in Saint-Denis Stade de France (1998), which can be easily converted from athletics track into football ground even taking spectators just behind the pitch. The stadium can be also used for the most varied sports, such as skiing and beach volleyball and even for motor races, as well as for non-sporting events, such as fairs and concerts. Sydney Australia Stadium (1999) was designed already knowing that it would be converted after the Olympic Games of 2000 by pulling down the upper part of the two outdoor stands, reducing the number of seats and providing the whole stadium with a roof structure. Similarly, City of Manchester Stadium (2002) was designed for the Commonwealth Games already knowing that just one year after its opening it would be converted from an athletics stadium with two rings into a three-level football stadium, by lowering the height of the playing field.

Note 6: The most striking examples of new "urban icons" are Istanbul Atat�rk Stadium (2001), whose roof is the bridge linking Asia and Europe enhancing the peculiarity of the city, which is the only one in the world located between two continents, Lisbon Da Luz (2003), Porto Do Dragao (2003) and the small Braga Municipal Stadium (2003), without "curved sectors" and set in a mountain landscape, Athens Olympic Stadium (renovated in 2004), Munich Allianz Arena (2005), with the characteristic light effects of the luminous façade that fully encompasses it, London Emirates Stadium (2006) and the new Wembley (2007) with its big steel arch that makes it identifiable all over the world, as well as "Bird's Nest", Beijing Olympic Stadium (2008), a technological and architectural jewel.

© by Angelo Spampinato

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 900