To football fans around the world, FC Barcelona's Camp Nou is hallowed turf where giants of the game like Maradona, Johan Cruyff and Ronaldinho have played. Now one of the stars of the architectural world, Norman Foster, is to transform the stadium with a new look.
To football fans around the world, FC Barcelona's Camp Nou is hallowed turf where giants of the game like Maradona, Johan Cruyff and Ronaldinho have played. Now one of the stars of the architectural world, Norman Foster, is to transform the stadium with a new look.
Lord Foster was chosen by the Catalan club to give the 98,000-seater stadium a EUR 250 mln facelift. Instead of the plain walls, it will be given a mosaic of multi-coloured tiles in blue and scarlet, the colours of the football team. In a nationalistic touch, it will be encased by red and yellow tiles, symbolising Catalonia's flag.
Lord Foster said he was inspired to give the stadium a 'second skin' by the trencadis, a mosaic style, consisting of broken tiles made famous at the turn of the 20th Century by Barcelona's most famous architect, Antoni Gaudi.
Lord Foster, chairman and founder of Foster + Partners, said: 'Football is a democratic force that brings together all social classes in celebration, therefore a stadium, perhaps more than any other type of building, is a truly democratic space. The design of a stadium is the greatest expression of an architecture that goes beyond aesthetics to have a social agenda. In this sense I believe there is a wonderful connection between football and architecture.'
Lord Foster is to preserve the stadium's original asymmetrical shape, designed by the Catalan Francesc Mitjans i Miró and increase capacity to 106,000. The new stadium, which is expected to be ready for the 2011-12 season, will have a retractable roof, supported by cables. Lord Foster described this as a 'flexible, sustainable and ecological solution'.
The exterior will be made of a mixture of polycarbonate and glass panels. It will be able to change colour, allowing the exterior of the stadium to be used for light displays at night or as a giant TV screen. Lord Foster has already left his mark in Barcelona when he designed the Collserola tower, a telecommunications building, which allowed the world to see the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Other landmark projects include London's Millennium Bridge, the Berlin Reichstag and the Hearst building in New York.
By Graham Keeley in Barcelona