The Eastern block is more concrete than brick Brick seems to be the choice of architects who have designed some of the newer 'retro' US baseball stadiums, which look really good, like this one in NYC (the NY Mets):

I have been to Citi Field a few times when visiting the folks back in NY. It is a very nice stadium but from a baseball standpoint you cannot walk around the lower tier to see the game. They closed it off for suites. It is a bit of a bother but the rest of the stadium is superb and far better than Yankee Stadium. Here in Denver, brick is everywhere and it is open all along the bottom deck. It is a nice feature because outside in the concourse you can grab a bite or drink aand nestle up to field without having to pay for the premium seats. Spent many days buying a ticket in the upper deck but stood pretty much at field level knocking back pints (OK, they're plastic cups of shoddy American beer) and watching a game. I am sure to be biased but Coors Field is perhaps the finest places to catch a baseball game. If you do decide to sit on the right field side and in the upper deck which face west you get to see the sun set over the mountains.

With that said if they replicate Citi Field which has major influences of Coors Field, it be great. Citi Field is very nice but the one drawback I mentioned kills it for me.

This is all very exciting, and great for those of us too far away (sunny scotland!) to hear in depth reviews of what happened/was discussed at the consultation! If this comes off I think we will have one of the most envied stadiums in world football......Roman's not gonna muck about!!

 

I dont know about any one else but my favourite quote from all of this was from Davey Baby " The Brickwork will be London Stock..."   This will be absolutely iconic! 

 

Keep up the good work Roman & CFC!!

I have been to Citi Field a few times when visiting the folks back in NY. It is a very nice stadium but from a baseball standpoint you cannot walk around the lower tier to see the game. They closed it off for suites. It is a bit of a bother but the rest of the stadium is superb and far better than Yankee Stadium. Here in Denver, brick is everywhere and it is open all along the bottom deck. It is a nice feature because outside in the concourse you can grab a bite or drink aand nestle up to field without having to pay for the premium seats. Spent many days buying a ticket in the upper deck but stood pretty much at field level knocking back pints (OK, they're plastic cups of shoddy American beer) and watching a game. I am sure to be biased but Coors Field is perhaps the finest places to catch a baseball game. If you do decide to sit on the right field side and in the upper deck which face west you get to see the sun set over the mountains.

With that said if they replicate Citi Field which has major influences of Coors Field, it be great. Citi Field is very nice but the one drawback I mentioned kills it for me.

I've been to quite a few baseball stadiums on my travels, and was very impressed with Citi Field. Not been to Coors Field, as the only time I've been to Colorado (1980) you didn't yet have an MLB team! I've been to three of the oldest stadiums (Fenway, Wrigley and Dodger Stadium), and enjoyed Wrigley and Dodger Stadium more than Fenway, because we had fantastic seats, and I preferred the atmosphere there. I've also been to two of the worst stadiums, in Tampa and Oakland, which don't have any real character and no great atmosphere. I'm off to Tennessee next month and will be visiting the brand new Nashville minor league ball park, which should be good.

I've been a KC Royals fan since spending the summer of 1980 in the US, and must get to their stadium one day. It's got a good reputation, but I prefer stadiums with more of a city-centre location (pretty rare these days), so I'm delighted that we look to be staying put in the most central location of any London club.

I think the brick will look great at the Bridge.

I'm biased but the best US baseball stadium I've been to is AT&T Park. I guess for the setting more than anything else. Do love some of the older ones like Wrigley though.

It's all about character - the fact we aren't having a soulless breezeblock identikit stadium in a nondescript part of town will do for me.

If football is England’s national religion, the sport may soon have its very own majestic cathedral, courtesy of Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who have unveiled plans for a gargantuan new home for Chelsea FC, “inspired by the design of Westminster Abbey”.

 

Depicted in a series of misty sepia renderings, on display in a dingy room beneath the East Stand at Stamford Bridge for a limited three-day consultation exercise this week, the design claims to take its cue from the gothic architecture of the Abbey, in whose diocese the stadium once stood. Commissioned by the club’s owner, Roman Abramovich, the project is expected to cost at least £500m and will expand crowd capacity from 42,000 to 60,000, stepping up in a three-tiered stack of terraces.

 

Few details have been revealed so far, but the project appears to be making a drastic leap away from recent years’ lightweight approach to stadium design, instead opting for a massive masonry language of heavy brick piers and soaring vaults, recalling London’s Victorian railway viaducts.

 

It is a decidedly urban response to the dense, inner-city site, a powerful contrast to the freestanding object-in-the-landscape approach that most stadia adopt, often standing among industrial sheds on the outskirts of their cities. An elevated brick bridge will connect the stadium to nearby Fulham Road, bringing supporters directly into the stands above a world of bars, cafes and shops in the arches beneath the structure. It looks set to create a series of atmospheric spaces to explore, with a similar feeling to the passages of Camden market or the vaults beneath London Bridge station.

 

“We have tried to make it a place where people will really feel at home,” says architect Jacques Herzog, himself an avid football fan who still plays once a week, speaking from his studio in Basel. “I’ve never had that feeling so strongly, as when I saw my first games in Liverpool and Manchester, how much you have this sense of a club’s identity in the stadium in England – more than anywhere else in Europe.”

 

He says their new stadium will have the feeling of “a castle, or a medieval walled village … something you wouldn’t find anywhere else.” “It is beyond beauty or ugliness,” he adds. “It’s about creating something unique. Like Anfield – that is certainly not a nice stadium, but it has this amazing tradition.”

 

The stadium will be wrapped in a cage of slender concrete and brick columns that will rise to a zig-zagging profile, before folding over to form the roof – as if the architects’ tangle of struts in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium had been straightened out and neatened up. The drawings appear to show that, as in Beijing, the area between the facade and the stands will be a dramatic nave-like space, housing a series of muscular spiralling staircases, topped with a roof of flying brick buttresses.

 

“It is really a structural thing, very naked in some way,” says Herzog. “It is not décor, but really one thing inside and out, not an envelope with something different inside.”

 

As well as the obvious nods to London’s architectural history (for which the architects have apparently looked back to the 14th-century Stamford Bridge that once stood here) there are clear echoes of brutalist architecture of the 1970s. The rusticated ribs and sculptural stairs recall the work of the great American architect Paul Rudolph, whose buildings had a raw, uncompromising heft – long despised, but now enjoying a revival among a younger generation of architects.

 

The Chelsea scheme stands in sharp contrast to Herzog & de Meruon’s previous football stadium designs, including the inflatable ribbed blob of the Allianz Arena for Bayern Munich, which glows beside the motorway like a lantern, and their recently completed Bordeaux stadium, a gleaming rectangular temple on the outskirts of the city, with a wafer-thin roof hovering on a forest of impossibly slender steel columns.

 

“The Bordeaux stadium has a very southern spirit,” says Herzog. “It is all about refinement and elegance – things that would be totally absurd in Chelsea.”

 

If the French arena is pristine and razor-sharp, London’s version will be a hefty brute of a thing, a rugged castle that will happily withstand all that Chelsea fans – and their opponents – will ever want to throw at it.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/jul/03/chelseas-new-stadium-inspired-medieval-village-beyond-ugliness-roman-abramovich?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=twt_gu

I also like the 'old school London' type feel of the bars and cafes under the 'viaduct passageway' ... I can well imagine that will be very atmospheric on matchday.

f**k this is exciting.

Really like it.

 

Thought we'd get yet another bland identikit stadium so I'm really happy that we're going to have one of very few stadia in the UK that someone who knows almost nothing football could identify with a glance.

SW6 locals not happy it seems...

 

http://www.fulhamsw6.com/default.asp?section=info&page=conchelsea010.htm

SW6 locals not happy it seems...

 

http://www.fulhamsw6.com/default.asp?section=info&page=conchelsea010.htm

 

Some resistance is always going to happen. 

 

But the complaints need to be justifiable rather than because they just don't want it to happen. 

FYI the other thread on this was closed so all chat is in once place but if anyone wants a read - http://www.theshedend.com/topic/28138-£500-million-plan-for-new-stamford-bridge/

The Brickwork arches look Ideal for spraying "Turn back Millwall", obviously in todays era in organic evaporating eco paint.

Roman is a legend.cant believe he is paying the entire thing himself.

It exciting times if it gets the go ahead let's not forget it hasn't yet

Some resistance is always going to happen. 

 

But the complaints need to be justifiable rather than because they just don't want it to happen. 

that's what it seems like

 

"Respect the wildlife and not turn fulham into a concrete jungle"

 

when was the last time any of those people got out of their houses and walked down fulham road?

 

"wildlife" next thing you know they'll be claiming there are elephants and monkeys living in brompton park...mind you - is the stadium expansion going to to swallow it up? i didnt think it was going to expand that far...correct me if im wrong

Complaints are inevitable.. The Emirates had to dislodge swathes of local businesses to build their stadium, so local people complaining certainly wont affect the overall decision.. history tells us. 

Didn't the west get delayed because the found a rare flower growing in the area that was been developed

Message to SW6 residents.

 

If you enjoy wildlife and nature, sell your million £ home and come and live by me. 

 

Don't let the cowpat put you off.

Roman is a legend.cant believe he is paying the entire thing himself.

That's what I was thinking, 500 million pounds is beyond my imagination. Will he have any money left or am I totally naive about his fortune?

According to Forbes (2015 data) his net worth is 9 billion USD.

According to Forbes (2015 data) his net worth is 9 billion USD.

That's.....quite a lot. Not all in liquid assets I assume, but I probably worry for nothing :-)

Maybe he's realised you can't take it with you, and his kids only need so much ?

That's.....quite a lot. Not all in liquid assets I assume, but I probably worry for nothing :-)

He'll make it back in 12 months with the businesses and investments he'll have!

,, £500 million is a massive underestimate, it will cost nearly double that....... IMO

It does look absolutely epic! I'm getting more & more excited the more I read in this thread about the meetings.

Magic pass

www.goo.gl/gR6FWC