There are many modern buildings in which structural glass has a significant role to play. In skyscrapers, it can be structural, part of the lightweight frame that makes building to great heights easy. But in other structures, its chief utility is to provide natural light.
In some instances, extra requirements will include clear toughened glass. That should certainly be true in sporting venues, where the pressure of crowded areas and potential for disorder that leads to damage are notable considerations.
The use of extra glass to provide more light appears to be a common feature of the latest architectural designs for football stadiums, be they entirely new venues or older grounds undergoing enhancement and expansion.
Elland Road Plans Revealed
A venue where the latter is planned is Elland Road in Leeds, where Leeds United gained ownership of the stadium last year. The club has just gained promotion back to the Premier League, making it a very good time to issue a statement of intent to expand the venue from its current 37,000 capacity to 53,000.
Images of the plans indicate a very large amount of glass in the proposed new stands. Much of this is in the windows and glass doors of the exterior, providing plenty of natural light, but it is also a feature of side panels at either end of the new stand roofs, allowing more sun in sideways through structures that are commonly made entirely from sheet metal.
As yet, images of what the insides of the stands will look like have not been revealed, but, if it is designed along the lines of many other modern stands, there may be more glass involved, including balustrades and even include toughened glass partitions, either dividing executive areas from the rest of the stadium or as a means of crowd segregation.
Glass Dominating New Design Trend
If this is the case, the design will continue a recent trend in football stadium design that has seen much more glass and the use of natural light featuring in venues that previously would have had a lot of concrete and steel structures, illuminated mostly by artificial lighting.
This can be seen in many places. Everton’s new stadium will feature glass in many places, from escalators to internal balustrades, not to mention a large glass curtain wall at the back of the stands that will not only allow natural light in but also capture the setting sun before midweek games. The concourses also have glass windows at the back.
A similar design feature can be seen in Luton Town’s planned new stadium at Power Court. The venue will feature huge glass windows, and balustrades. Once again, this will need to be reinforced for safety reasons.
Everton’s new stadium has now been finished and will replace Goodison Park at the end of the current season, while planning permission is in place for Power Court. Less advanced at this stage, but more ambitious, is Manchester United’s plan for a new Old Trafford to be built on land adjacent to the existing stadium.
A key feature of this will be a vast glass umbrella, which some critics have likened to a circus tent (along with jibes about recent team performances), but which will create the largest public realm in the world, making possible a wide range of supplementary activities beyond simply turning up at the turnstile and passing through to watch a football match.
Images also show glass balustrades for balconies and escalators, all of which are in stark contrast with the familiar designs of traditional stadiums.
Why The New Designs Fit Changing Purposes
New stadiums like these, or the proposed new home for Oxford United at Kidlington, offer a blank canvas for architects to design new concepts that include a lot of glass and substantially depart from many past concepts of stadium design.
By definition, the Elland Road project cannot do this. Leeds United, in the manner of Liverpool, are opting to revamp an existing stadium rather than move to a new one, a model that Manchester United themselves used in the 1990s and 2000s before years of neglect led to the current decision to build afresh.
In some respects, the new approach to design reflects changing social attitudes towards a game that was once decidedly working class and often seen as negatively associated with violence and misplaced testosterone. Now, a game that is more orientated towards families, crosses class divides and attracts vast sums of money means stadium facilities can adjust.
No longer places of weekly pilgrimage that stand idle the rest of the week, football venues are increasingly places for tourism, conferences and social functions. This transforms them from fortresses to welcoming places, which means the architecture must follow suit, whether in modifying existing venues or developing entirely new ones.