Today was yet another day with new experiences, starting off with an exclusive tour of Middle Temple Hall, to Sir John Soane’s museums, and to the beautiful contemporary high rises (I especially liked the Cheesegrater, a building I had a new found appreciation for after watching the PBS documentary, and St Mary Axe for the innovations in both structure and sustainability as well as its uniqueness in terms of a rounded skyscraper. However for me the créme de la créme was easily the Europa League match between AC Milan and Arsenal. Both teams have meaning for me with AC Milan being a team that I played for of their youth squad for a year and Arsenal being my mothers and some of closest friends favorite team. I’ll be honest pretending to be an Arsenal fan for 90 minutes may have been one of my toughest challenges in my life so far but it was hard not to feed off the energy of the crowd. I found myself jumping up with excitement for all three Arsenal goals. It was honestly an amazing experience and I don’t regret it for one second. In terms of architecture, HOK, the designer of this project has practically almost every major sport’s arena/stadium/park under their resume however always manages to create a unique experience at all of them. Emirate Stadium was no exception. The flowiness of the stands and roof reminded me of Zaha Hadid in a way. The roof also did a fantastic job of making the roar of the crowd even more explosive than it is. It was evident during an “Ospina” chant when you almost felt like you were being fully surrounded by a crowd of 60,000 chanting his name. I realize I’m rambling on a little as I appproach 300 words but this was truly an amazing experience and a glimpse into a scene so prevalent in many British lives.
Adrian, I’m so glad you had fun at the game. A few of us made a poor attempt at making it to the game to scalp tickets but we’re ultimately bested by circumstance. I found it interestng that you compared the stadium to the work of Zaha Hadid because I was sort of underwhelming to me when I compared it to professional stadiums back in the states. I won’t argue with you on the explosiveness of the stadium however. We could hear the roars coming from the stadium a mile away. I’m glad you posted the picture from the inside so I can now save that and lie to all of my friends that told me I needed to go to a futbol match during my time in London.
I’m happy to hear even though you couldn’t get tickets, you were still able to enjoy the game and the amazing culture of football. When talking about the roof and stands I think Zaha Hadid-esque is a better way to describe it. It’s nowhere near some of the amazing designs she has done in the world but it shares similar elements to this stadium. Especially in the concourse, it’s very evident that it isn’t not Zaha Hadid for how uninventive and simple it is compared to her aquatic center and other projects. With that being said, I’d definitely argue the stadium Is comparable with some of the other great stadiums HOK has created. It’s really cool that you could hear the crowd from that far out, it shows it really packs a punch for 65,000ish people!
Hey Adrian!
It sounds like you all had a lot of fun at the AC Milan vs. Arsenal game! The fact that you played for AC Milan’s youth league is awesome and I’m sure that this made having the opportunity to go to the game even more special. I wasn’t aware that HOK was the ones behind the Emirate stadium but I agree with you in that they seem to be able to choose designs for each stadium that help to facilitate the movement of sound. Would this be one of your favorite projects by HOK? I would say that for me this one is a close second to the shard although this does have the potential to change with the new skyscrapers being built.