How Populous changed the face of sporting stadia – with Old Trafford next

Global architectural design firm has redefined how sport is watched live, with Manchester United’s home on the agenda

Recently I was invited to watch a game from one of the hospitality boxes at the new Tottenham Stadium. It was a chilly night, and while we were sitting in the expansive armchairs affording uninterrupted views across the pitch, my host pointed to a switch in the armrest.
“Heated seats,” he said.
Which is not what those of us brought up in the old school might expect at a football game.
But then over the last couple of decades, everything has changed. Stadiums that were once a death trap have metamorphosed into comfortable, multi-purpose entertainment destinations. When Everton move into their new Bramley Dock home, they will become the seventh Premier League club to have occupied freshly built, state-of-the-art premises since the Millennium. Provided, of course, they have not been relegated to the Championship.
At the heart of the stadium revolution has been the global architectural partnership Populous. For 30 years since their first UK project – the John Smiths Stadium in Huddersfield – they have designed the buildings that have come to define the way we watch sport. From Wembley and the Principality Stadium, through the Emirates and Tottenham, to Wimbledon’s Centre Court and the grandstand at Ascot, they have been behind much of this country’s new sporting infrastructure.
And not just in Britain. The futuristic sweep of the BBVA Monterrey Stadium in Mexico which will host matches at the next World Cup is one of theirs. As is the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the biggest cricket ground in the world and at the heart of the Indian city’s bid to host the 2036 Olympics. Not to forget the astonishing Lusail Stadium in Qatar where Lionel Messi raised the World Cup this time last year.
The next major landmark on the horizon is Manchester United’s ageing and creaking home Old Trafford, which as Telegraph Sport revealed on Boxing Day, has already come with a recommendation from Populous for complete demolition and a new £2 billion stadium built.
Earlier this month the company staged an exhibition of their work, and I was privileged to get a guided tour from the company’s managing director, Chris Lee, the man who said this week that an entirely new stadium is the best of the three current options – the others being a complete redevelopment or a small makeover.
“Stadiums used to be functional exercises,” he explains, as we look at photographic evidence of Populous’s global reach. “Not any more. Now they are regarded as cultural assets.”
More than that. As will be soon obvious as the derelict old Liverpool dockland around Everton’s new home is reborn, the stadium is nowadays not just an end in itself. It is the start of something.
“Sports venues were once reckoned bad neighbours,” says Lee. “The American model was to move them out of town, surrounded by car parks. Now they are engines of urban regeneration.”
The first place to recognise that a stadium could be used to seed development was Baltimore in Maryland, when the new Orioles ballpark was constructed in Camden Yards; a neglected, post-industrial part of downtown.
“Since they went there, the whole area has been completely revived,” says Lee. “And you can see it in this country. When we did the Emirates it was a critical part of a plan to link Lower Holloway to Islington, there are going to be 4500 new homes built around Spurs, Wembley is undergoing a huge redevelopment of what was a pretty woeful area of decay.”
Whatever the wider development implications, however, these buildings are foremost places for the fans. And even in that, there has been a change of emphasis over the years.
“English football used to be guilty of seeing its spectators as a captive audience, you know ‘we’ll treat you how we want to treat you and you’ll still come back’,” says Lee. “The change over the last 30 years has been to recognise that fans are customers with choice.”
Although initially, it was a certain category of fan that was prioritised.
“Yes, I admit in the early days the concentration was on corporate facilities. The big move at Spurs was to say from the least to the most expensive seat, we will give you something.”
And at Spurs that something is substantial. Expansive food and drink halls, magnificent sightlines, enhancement of the acoustics: everything to create experience.
“The focus of the Tottenham Stadium design was on atmosphere, how to create identity in a seating bowl,” explains Lee. “Daniel Levy and I spent a lot of time travelling. We went everywhere, shamelessly borrowing bits we liked. Not just to sport venues, but concert halls, theatres. There are little bits from all over put together in that building.”
Levy was hands-on in the process, sending a stream of emails, anxious things were done the best they could be. Not least in the stadium’s capacity: channelling the North London derby energy, it had to seat more fans than the Emirates. Though Lee suggests the Spurs vice-chairman was not the only client he has had who was keen to be involved every step of the way.
“When we did the new Ascot grandstand [which opened in 2006], the Queen was very hands on. We had a monthly meeting with her, showing progress on design and build. She had so much input. And it always smooths the planning process when the client is the Sovereign.”
The late Queen was the Daniel Levy of Ascot: who knew?
Magnificent as it may be, even the Spurs Stadium is by no means the end of things. The innovation is relentless. Populous are building the new Coop Live indoor arena beside the Etihad in Manchester, which incorporates up to the minute acoustic engineering that will soon inform the design of outdoor venues. And then there is the Sphere – the Las Vegas entertainment bowl that Lee and his colleagues designed.
“When we started on that the technology required hadn’t even been invented,” he says of the up-to-the-minute sound and light systems there. “And I think you saw at the recent Grand Prix in Vegas what that building can be.”
Indeed it was the visual centre point of the race, with the cars spinning around what Lee describes as the biggest billboard in the world. And the building’s technical possibilities point to a new future of watching sport. There could soon be Spheres all over the globe, showing footage of live events in the most extraordinarily immersive way. While the North London derby takes place at the Tottenham Stadium, thousands of fans in Shanghai, Singapore and Saudi could be watching things unfold inside their local Sphere, feeling, thanks to the projected sights and sounds, as if they are actually there.
“The truth is, the future of watching sport will involve technology, lots of technology” says Lee.
Well, that and heated seats.