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Professor Lars JT Pedersen and Fredrik Barth, CEO of Norwegian firm VILL Architecture have revealed their radical plans for Manchester United’s Old Trafford.
Since Sir Jim Ratcliffe completed his partial 27.7% investment in United, there has been much debate about what to do with the club’s iconic home.
The INEOS billionaire is believed to want to regenerate the Theater of Dreams by creating a stadium to rival the 90,000-seater Wembley in north London.
Trafford Council announced a 15-year plan to regenerate the area around Old Trafford in February. United then confirmed the formation of an Old Trafford Regeneration Taskforce with Ratcliffe as chairman. Other members of the task force include Lord Coe, club legend Gary Neville and Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham.
Another option on the table is to renovate Old Trafford instead of building a brand new stadium.
Neville recently opened up about the two alternatives and explained that the emotional attachment of fans and those associated with the Red Devils to Old Trafford should not be the reason why the prospect of building a new stadium is dismissed.
The Sky Sports pundit claimed that Old Trafford has continuously developed and changed throughout its life and that the 20-time English champions should be looking for the best facilities in the country. He mentioned the Tottenham Hotspur stadium as a benchmark for United’s future.
A report covered by The Peoples Person reports that the task force’s final decision on which course of action to pursue will be made by the end of the year.
The report states that a number of top architectural firms have put their hat in the ring for Ratcliffe to entrust them with the responsibility of reshaping Old Trafford. One of these firms has now spoken to The Manchester Evening News and revealed how they will do it.
Pedersen and Barth, CEO of VILL Architecture, emphasized the importance of linking Manchester’s identity to the new Old Trafford and having a “round” stadium that can set standards in the football industry.
“Circular” in this case does not refer to the shape, but rather the construction of the stadium from recycled resources – concrete, steel, wood and metal. This would lead to minimal waste and as such, make Old Trafford extremely environmentally friendly and sustainable on a scale never seen before.
Pedersen and Barth told MEN that this is the direction football is going and United would need to be one of the biggest sporting brands in the world to be ahead of the curve.
Pedersaid said: “I have just presented a project on how to make events more circular to the UEFA committee, so basically how you can reduce waste in stadiums. We’ve actually visited Arsenal to see their work on this, we’re about to visit Real Sociedad, so we’ve got a lot of tentacles coming out. We’re looking at how to get half-drunk and drunk football fans to behave sustainably in stadiums, but also how football clubs can operate in more sustainable ways.”
“We work with FA Norway and we are researchers, but we work together with architects like Fredrick because we want change to happen, sustainable change in the world and so we started talking about Manchester, where there is a city with a lot to love.”
Barth said: “At Vill Arkitektur we have worked on many different projects, but large urban projects, which go in a circular and sustainable direction, have been our specialty. In the last few years I managed to combine work and pleasure, working together with Lars and combining football, which was great. We have some projects with some smaller clubs in Norway, all the way up to the biggest team in Bergen, which is SK Brann.”
He explained that investors have shown a willingness to engage in circularity and that the results have been incredibly positive.
Berth added of United: “Talks about Manchester and Old Trafford are visible in Norwegian newspapers and we have been talking about it for a long time. Looking at the new stadiums built for the World Cup, they take architecture into something foreign and far from local identity.”
“We started talking about how we could do something about the discussion in Manchester, building a new stadium or refurbishing it, so they could do that… Our idea was to go beyond football, to try to connect the stadium with the fabric and identity of Manchester.”
“If you build it like that, it could be a blow to the blue side of town that football doesn’t have to be what it’s starting to become. We are trying to talk again about who Manchester United should be as a football club. What do they represent? What is their identity? There are core values about United that have perhaps been a little bit forgotten and that’s a shame, in my opinion.”
Asked what Old Trafford would look like with the circular ambitions of Barth, VILL Architecture and Pedersen, Barth told the newspaper: “It was built in different styles and different periods and it doesn’t work anymore. Watching Real Madrid and Barcelona renovate their stadiums shows that it is possible. I understand there are difficulties in doing that, but it is possible to remove the outer structure of the stadium, which is the leaky roof and the old structure, and look at what is left underneath.”
“Is it possible to reuse the grounds, or inside the rooms, or are they too bad? Take away everything that doesn’t work, but save what can be saved and then we could introduce a new system that could wrap around the entire stadium. And then we would use cranes from the North Sea.”
“These are the structures that Great Britain and Norway have been building for the last few years – and they are construction technology that surpasses everything. They are taller than the Empire State Building, they are engineering masterpieces standing in the North Sea and they can be reused.”
“Our company, Nordic Circles, started to restore them, recovering materials for building beams and columns. They are structures, essentially legs, that you can use on the framework grid for Old Trafford, so you can take our industrial history and use it as a foundation for new walls.”
He further stated that a new roof could be built – either fixed or contract – and this is an achievable goal due to the structures already in place.
H noted that after the roof, their company will continue to create an outer layer that combines historical architecture and the desire for something new that is in line with the values of the city and its people.
Barth compared this new layer to something like a one-on-one sphere in Las Vegas. The difference would be that, unlike the Sphere in Vegas, the one at Old Trafford could feature the shapes of Victorian warehouse buildings in Manchester or the logos of relevant football competitions such as the Champions League on Tuesday or Wednesday nights.
Barth revealed to MEN that it is important that the construction of a new stadium brings an element of freshness and something that is completely new.
He cautioned that the trick is to strike a delicate balance between integrating sustainability into infrastructure planning and ensuring that the emotional, identity and talking points of the club are also taken into account.
“You can do that while connecting the stadium to the heart of the city, by building a stadium that is low-emission, highly re-usable and has all these future-proof features.” A project of this scale takes many years, and it’s also a commitment you’ll live with for many years, so it makes sense to build something for the future.”
Finally, he said United are on track to become the first major sports team in the world to put sustainability and circularity at the very top of their Old Trafford project.
While all these plans are still theoretical, they offer an exciting glimpse of what the future could hold for United and fans, who have been calling for change amid years of neglect and mismanagement at Old Trafford by the Glazers.
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