The architectural studio OMA has revealed its updated design for the 63,000 seater Feyenoord stadium. This magnanimous stadium is said to be one of the largest stadiums in the Netherlands. This stadium will be the new face of the top-tier Dutch football club, located alongside the river Maas this stadium has all the scenic qualities to be one of the sought-after locations for sports.
Project Details of Feyenoord Stadium
- Architect – OMA
- Location – Netherlands
- Landscape Architect – LOLA
- Vertical transport– Techniplan
- Lighting– Philips Lighting
- Facades – TGM
- Crowd Control Simulation – InControl
- Lighting– Philips Lighting
- Structure and MEP consultant- Royal Haskoning DHV Acoustics, Event Acoustics, Peutz
The Feyenoord stadium is said to be a part of OMA’s masterplan which was designed for the redevelopment of Rotterdam Zuid. The masterplan is developed by OMA with the Football club Feyenoord, Stadium Feijenoord, municipality of Rotterdam, and the Feyenoord City project team. The plan has been designed for the past 2.5 years now.
Led by OMA in the frontier, the stadium was designed with Keevs van Casteren and Shinji Takagi. The landscape architect LOLA, a Rotterdam-based architecture studio designed the stadium in a way that integrates it in the neighborhood and feels like a part of it rather than standing out.
“The core of the design is the stadium’s central position in Rotterdam Zuid and its relationship with the river Nieuwe Maas. By lifting the public domain of the stadium, we have created a new balcony over the river, on which the new stadium takes its iconic position”, says OMA’s managing partner David Gianotten.
OMA had first revealed the design for the same in 2018 but it has been refining this design in discussion with several other organizations and contractors since then. The stadium has a perfect bowl-shaped structure formed by the curved tiers that run continuously throughout close to the pitch offering views into the stadium across the city skyline.
The design over the years has gone through many changes, some of the primary ones are the relocation of the stadium’s food stands from inside the stadium into the surroundings to allow a much inclusive design pattern. This indeed favors the workability of the food stands on non-match days to thus, help fund the stadium and encourage an urban landscape within the neighborhoods that favors even the non-sporty crowd of the city.
This stadium is said to be a replacement for the historic De Kuip stadium built in the 1930s. In the new design and form of the new stadium, OMA has tried to integrate both the form and the feeling of the earlier stadium. As De Kuip has had a huge impact on the city residents for its intense atmosphere and historical matches, OMA has given the new design its due diligence and relevance. The feeling in the design has also been a vital part of making this stadium, the usage of steel diagrid along an oval-shaped form is done to give the sense of De Kuip.
The roof is supported by a diagram steel structure that is placed on a staggering oval-shaped tier-one above the other. This design, in turn, allows the three-tier stands to have uninterrupted views of the entire pitch, thus favoring the core purpose.
“It is a robust architecture that references the workers’ mentality of Rotterdam. At the same time, its state-of-the-art design offers Feyenoord supporters the best possible view of the pitch. Its oval bowl shape and tier design that places spectators as close to the pitch as possible ensure that players are surrounded by a sea of supporters, while not being interrupted. This leads to the most intense atmosphere in matches, which Feyenoord is so well-known for,” explained Gianotten.
The designers have ideated the stadium to give new definitions to the old architectural typologies, they plan to rethink and reinvent these definitions by new possibilities in program, form, materials, etc. The experimentation of having an active public space for daily usage irrespective of the match and non-match days makes the program more dynamic and usable. Designers claim that it is arguably a new kind of stadium which can be an informative insight into the future of stadium design.
Along with this stadium, OMA’s master plan consists of five main elements, that is the renovation of De Kuip, the Strip and Kuip Park, and the Urban Bridge development. The current De Kuip stadium is said to be renovated into apartments, commercial zones, public squares, and a sports center. De Strip is envisioned to provide a three- dimensional walkway facility for pedestrians that will connect the old stadium to the new stadium.
The new stadium is planned to be open to use by the year 2023.
