Real Madrid’s new Santiago Bernabéu represents a high point in stadium design, but also highlights how stadia have become increasingly inscrutable and detached from their surroundings.

Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium. (Credit: Marcus Bredt)

Words
Jason Sayer

Real Madrid is the most successful football team to ever exist. To be able to play in the iconic all-white kit is regarded as an honour among professional footballers. And to see the best players in the world – known as the ‘Galacticos –  play is an honour, too.

It’s fitting, then, that Real Madrid’s upgraded Santiago Bernabéu stadium reveals next to nothing about what takes place within its chromatic confines preserving the main event – the football – as a privilege that only paying customers can see.

Designed by German practice GMP Architekten with Spanish architecture studios L35 and Ribas & Ribas, the new Santiago Bernabéu is a remarkable piece of design. (The team won the commission after beating other teams involving Herzog & de Meuron, Rafael Moneo and Foster and Partners in a competition in 2012).

Now a multipurpose arena, capable of hosting much more than mere football matches, the hermetically sealed stadium has a retractable underground pitch and fully retractable roof.

The Santiago Bernabéu is located in the Chamartín district of Madrid. Enjoying a central location in the Spanish capital, the stadium sits within a block surrounded by the Paseo de la Castellana and the streets of Concha Espina, Padre Damián, and Rafael Salgado. (Credit: Marcus Bredt).

Seductively wrapped in stainless steel louvres, the original concrete structure is hidden from view – as is everything else that lies beyond.

There are several reasons for this. Generally speaking, the modern stadium daren’t leak the precious paid-for experience that takes place within, which is why the typology tends not to be porous from an urban point of view. It’s also considered good for the atmosphere to contain the cacophony of noise that emanates from the stands every other weekend, so fans benefit too.

The net result is that stadia are becoming increasingly self-contained. But is this a good thing?

Maine Road in May 2003. The stadium was home to Manchester City from 1923 to 2003. (Credit: Greater Manchester Police)

There was a time when living near a football stadium was bad news for the price of your property. Hooliganism, litter, noise and road closures were all mitigating factors that meant living near a stadium wasn’t a good idea at all.

That was the case, at least, until the turn of the millennium, after which something strange began to happen: properties located near stadia started to fare a bit better. There was a caveat, however, in that this only pertained to new stadia. But what was it about them that led to this change?

In response to the legitimate fears (noted above) that living near a stadium could be seen as a bad thing, sports teams began to develop new stadia on land beyond residential areas. Brownfield sites were preferred, and the first major stadium in the UK to take this approach was the City of Manchester Stadium (now known as the Etihad).

The City of Manchester stadium, in the east of Manchester, was Built to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games, with the plan to let Manchester City rent it from the council. Today the council still owns the stadium, though all costs related to it — operating, maintenance and future capital costs — are paid for by the football club, who also benefit by receiving all the revenue from fans and other stadium users. (Credit: Arne Müseler / Wikimedia)

That stadium saw the club move eastwards from Moss Side in southern Manchester, where it was surrounded by terraced housing, relocating to derelict land on the site of a former colliery.

With its pioneering cable-stayed roof design from Arup, was seen as an agent of regeneration. Free from having to negotiate with individual homeowners in the vicinity — the problem Chelsea FC with Herzog & de Meuron ran into when looking to expand — the council and club was more free to develop the area around as it pleased. Now though, the stadium was at arm’s length from any Mancunian residential communities, with all for corners of the stadium closed up so that the pitch was out of sight, visually inaccessible to any chancers trying to peak in.

This model of stadium development has proved to be a successful one. Stadia are financial behemoths, tasked with bringing as much money into the club – and letting as little out – as possible. Today, you will be hard-pressed to stumble upon a modern new-build stadium when walking around a city, and even less likely to glimpse the precious green space inside.

(Credit: Marcus Bredt)

Back in Madrid, the Santiago Bernabéu is a notable exception, occupying a spacious site in the Chamartín district of the Spanish capital – a prime location the club’s president, Florentino Perez, did not want to give up. The original design looked to include a hotel, and large shopping centre, which took advantage of the central location. But after objections from the planning authority, the former was scrapped, with the latter being dialled down.

Though even if stadia do offer community value through providing amenities beyond football, they need to better communicate this fact.

Stadia being in the heart of communities can be a good thing – but only if they fully embrace their neighbourhood, and only if they let passers-by engage with what’s going on inside. This is a delicate balancing act. Reporting on the project for the Architectural Record, Andrew Myers noted how “demographics will almost certainly evolve from today’s mix of families and seniors to a neighbourhood of young childless professionals and vacation rentals. ‘Bread and circuses’ goes the old adage, but not everyone wants Miss Swift in their living room. The authorities clearly knew this, but the economic benefits of a maxed-out Bernabéu for the city at large were too great to refuse.”

In a recent conversation with Michael Pawlyn at the Regenerative Architecture Index launch party, Brian Eno quipped that city centres are lacking in good places to go. The village church has less of a pull than it did 200 years ago, replaced, as Eno suggested, by shopping centres. But now, with the rise of online commerce, malls and high street outlets on their way out too, what’s replacing them?

There is a chance, then, for stadia to fill this gap. There are many parallels between religion and sport – and there’s genuine community value in having such shared experiences. What better way to bring communities together? But to really maximise this, we need the modern stadium to not be so far out it takes a determined effort to reach, or to have turned its back on what’s around it. Instead, new stadia need to get better at communicating what can be enjoyed inside — and become a proper community asset.