port is a game, and here as we approach the new century sport itself is perhaps the biggest game of all. The exciting thing about this real life game of sport is that no one knows the rules. It is an exercise of making a play and then waiting to see if anyone rules you off side. Ownership of more than one club, control of digital rights and the Internet image, club ownership and media companies - are they the same entity? Yes, we are at present experiencing the true game of Sport because sport is going through the biggest change it has ever experienced and in true sporting tradition nobody can be sure of what the results will be.

A few years ago a club chairman with vision was someone who could 'see' his club at the top of the league - to be winners. Now a chairman with vision must have a broader view and be able to 'see' a wide horizon packed with commercial deals, merchandising products, own brand television broadcasting and a clever way of keeping his star player. They also have to 'see' the way of achieving these things and often its through a new building, a stadium, an arena - that is where we come into the vision, our job is to help make that vision a reality.

The buildings that accommodate these sports are also going through huge change. For centuries, the word 'Architecture' was accorded such gravitas that it was applied only to structures identified with government, religious or our cultural heritage. Other structures, particularly those in the fields of industry and commerce, were dismissed as mere 'buildings' - utilitarian and unworthy of serious recognition. That view has diminished, with the result that many fine factory and office buildings are receiving the recognition they have long merited. Buildings for sport has faced a similar struggle to gain the status and credibility they deserve.

We are particularly proud of the fact that in 1995 the Royal Institute of British Architects granted its coveted Building of the Year Award to a stadium (McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield) for the first time ever. In 1997 following the opening of the Reebok Stadium for Bolton Wanderers Football Club, 'The Times' described the venue as a 'triumph of high-tech architecture and engineering.' The newspaper further contended that such buildings looked certain to become 'the dominant landmarks of Britain in the 21st Century'.

Despite their historically poor image, there is no other building genre so powerful, so able to touch the hearts and minds of people. Physically a stadium can accommodate the inhabitants of an entire town for a few precious hours. Emotionally they can captivate entire cities and countries, and events, hold sway over the attention of most of the world. They are buildings that can change lives, providing us with folklore, and memories that remain ingrained within our collective culture for years after the event.

Stadia and the activities they encompass can lift the individual to elation and invoke a euphoria that may never be forgotten. Equally, they can be the scenes of enormous disappointments and heartbreaking moments. Stadia have in effect become the social 'cathedrals' of our time, hallowed places where we can all be as one with our community. Places where we share a common bond with friends and strangers, and where we can sing, yell and express ourselves in a manner quite different to our lives beyond the stadium gates. No other building type affects us in quite the same way.

The development of this building type has been forged over the years by technological advances and the increasing numbers of spectators attending live sports events through the early part of this century, peaking around the 1950's. At about that time the affect of television on this live audience started to take effect and impacted on sport and the stadia they occupied.

The second generation of stadia was the response, placing greater emphasis on comfort and support facilities and ensuring a safe environment to watch sport - the same levels of comfort and security as the living room. This generation of stadia focused on the spend-per-head of the spectator but they were still largely concrete bowls.

Walt Disney said at the opening of Disneyland in 1955, "all who come here shall find happiness and knowledge". Walt proved you could build a leisure facility that attracted an entire family, and one that was not only safe and comfortable but where people would also gain knowledge. The third generation emerged, developing not just more 'user friendly' facilities but 'user attracting' facilities. Sport being the focus but not the full story.

Sources of revenue changed, shifting away from the turnstiles and towards merchandising and television revenues. They contain a range of facilities from childcare centres to video game arcades, from confectionery shops to silver service restaurants, from concourse televisions to cinemas. However, technology continues to move on.

Sport has clearly become part of the entertainment industry and linked with the technology and money driving that industry. Digital information is the driving force. Digital broadcasting and narrowcasting is driving the new fourth generation. In the next century, most of us will experience our sport as 'bits' of information via a satellite or fibre optic cable rather than the atoms of the actual event. The growing number of television and Internet services require material to program and sport is ever popular and relatively cheap to package and broadcast to this medium.

The next generation of stadia will become digital studios offering broadcasts of sport, music, and other events. Some stadium operators with high-profile sports clubs in residence will have television programming as a major element of their core business. They will become software producers. This new breed of venue is more multi-functional with it's roots firmly planted in their host communities, welcoming spectators from all over their region, while at the same time relaying their wares to a vast audience around the globe.

Wellington New
Zealand (70k).

The more advanced venue operators will be able to attract, and therefore produce, a range of programming which goes far beyond coverage of a single event, using both their arena floor and adjoining studios, plus other spaces designed within the venue. With the use of handsets, both the live and remote audiences, will be able to interact with the venue's information and marketing services; to watch highlights, to call up statistics, to order tickets and merchandise at any time. The venue will become a database for sport and entertainment in that area, a library of knowledge and visual excitement, live audiences and as sports and entertainment studios serving the viewing and listening requirements of the remote audience.

The primary purpose of major sports events must be the legacy they leave to the city long after the event itself is forgotten. These buildings provide a point of reference in the wider cityscape. Everyone will know where the stadium is located but beyond their physical presence, the stadium also provides a tangible focus for community consciousness and social bonding - a place representing urban pride, a place in which one feels part of something important, a place to share and enjoy with one's neighbours. They are no longer concrete donuts built in a sea of car parking but civic structures which can, when used wisely, save downtown areas from dereliction by occupying entire city blocks and providing a rich mixture of sport, leisure and entertainment facilities servicing a communities needs.

They can also act as economic catalysts helping to generate revenue for surrounding businesses and services. Economic impact studies have indicated that for every pound or dollar spent inside a venue, between five to ten are spent outside, in the city itself. Indeed 'stadium tourism' is regarded as big business not only when the building is complete but even during its construction. Each year major stadia attract visitors in their millions, some to attend the events but also to see the building itself, perhaps to visit the museum and its associated dining, leisure and retail outlets. In Munich the second most popular tourist, attraction is its Olympic Stadium, while in Barcelona more tourists visit the museum at the Nou Camp stadium than the famous Picasso museum in the same city.

There are essentially three models for city integration and their consequent regeneration affects. The first is the 'city centre', plugged into the existing city transport infrastructure often using existing sites or opportunistically developing new land which thanks to technology makes it's construction practical and affordable. Cardiff's Millennium Stadium is a good example. It will have 72,500 seats for the Rugby World Cup later this year and has been positioned to anchor the river edge of the city's commercial centre. The building has been orientated at 90 degrees to the old Cardiff Arms Park and will have Britains first closing roof over a football field.

The new stadium
in Cardiff (65k).

The second model is 'city edge' where disused industrial land from a previous age is regenerated using a sports venue as the catalyst. Our recent example is the Victoria Stadium in Melbourne, Australia where the disused railway and dockland area close to the city centre is being given a kick-start through the development of the stadium. The £200 million venue is located on the edge of Melbourne's city centre in an area needing regeneration after the established dockside uses have died out.

It will seat 52,000 spectators around a natural grass playing field with a movable lower tier to cater for the variety of sports, and as well as corporate boxes the venue will have dining facilities for 6,500 people. There will be 2,500 car-parking spaces located underneath the playing field. Its closing roof will be Australia's first in a stadium and will become the home ground of the Australian Football League. The stadium is at the heart of a planned œ1.25 billion redevelopment of Melbourne's 220 hectares dockland area. 'Channel 7' is making a significant commitment to the development by relocating its main base to a new state-of-the-art digital broadcast centre, to be built as part of the stadium development.

A third model of regeneration is the city perimeter development where disused land is adopted to create a focus for the sub-urban community. This type of development can be used in both large cities such as Sydney or in smaller towns like Huddersfield with the economic ripple effect being relative to its location. Stadium Australia has been constructed for the Olympic Games with a capacity of 110,000 seats but with the removal of the upper end tiers and the addition of the end roofs it will transform into an 80,000 seat stadium after the games next year. The stadium is in the geographic centre of Sydney, which places it in a mid-urban context. The 770-hectare site used to be an abattoir and light industrial area.

Digital information is the next huge economic influence that will help define future venues. The advent of digital information and its affect on sport is like the affect the ocean has on a river. The affect is that the rules that have guided the river to the ocean simply no longer apply. Once in the ocean, there are no more river banks, no limits. Even the perceptions of a successful venue have changed, an event can no longer be judged by statistics alone. In 1995, the Adelaide Formula One Grand Prix attracted some 500,000 spectators during the course of four days, which at the time was a world record. Yet when the bidding came round again, Adelaide lost the event to its neighbour Melbourne, simply because the 1995 event had been widely perceived as unsuccessful. In short, venues need more than just people at an event in order to succeed.

Therefore, in addition, must we accept that the technology of today will soon be overtaken by the discoveries of tomorrow? In this respect, we should all take heed of the words of NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, following his colleagues' successful manned landing. 'Gentlemen,' Lovell was reported to have declared, 'Imagine what an amazing time we live in, when man can walk on the moon and an entire computer can fit into a single room.' That was in 1969, the year I first started studying architecture. That same year Concorde and the Jumbo Jet flew for the first time. It was also the year that saw the creation of the Internet. Three decades later Concorde and the Jumbo still fly, the Internet is changing our lives and there is many a production line automobile that contains more computing power under its bonnet than Houston used in all its rooms for the Apollo programme.

The spectacular scale of major sporting events like the Olympics is difficult to grasp, perhaps in their way they have taken over from the more common pursuit of the past, war. These events certainly need a military scale of organisation to make them happen. Just look at the scale of the Sydney Olympics next year. The main site will accommodate 584 sessions of sport over sixteen days in 34 venues where around 150,000 spectators will be at one site at any one time but up to half a million in any one day. They will occupy the 8.1 million event seats. However, this will be small compared to the hundreds of millions of people who will watch it on television around the world.

The athletes village is a town of 1,150 newly built houses accommodating most of the 15,300 athletes and officials and producing 60,000 meals each day with 10,000 support staff and producing 750,000 kg of laundry. The 15,000 media occupying the 176 broadcasting positions, manning the 640 cameras and the 1,480 commentating locations however will have to find their own accommodation along with the 2,500 SOCOG personnel, 2,500 technical officers and the 40,000 volunteers.

This compares with only a few hundred onlookers at the first Olympiad over 4,000 years ago. In those days, there was only one event on the programme. It was a race along the length of a single track measuring 600 feet, a distance known to the ancient Greeks as a 'stadion'. In many respects, it is a race which may never end.