Posts Tagged Football
Viñoly brought in as Chelsea looks at move to Battersea power station
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 19, 2011
Architect behind latest failed redesign for London's Battersea power station hired as creative brain behind developer Mike Hussey's plan for stadium for Chelsea football club at the site
Rafael Viñoly, the architect who worked on the most recent failed redesign for Battersea power station in London, has been hired as the creative brain behind developer Mike Hussey's proposal to build a stadium for Chelsea football club at the site.
Viñoly worked on the £5.5bn revamp of the Grade II*-listed London landmark that won planning permission last year, but the plan collapsed a week ago when the power station was put into administration after its owner, the Irish property firm Real Estate Opportunities, failed to repay £324m to its lenders. The 16-hectare site in south-west London, valued at £500m in October, will be put up for sale by the administrators, Ernst & Young, with Chelsea's billionaire owner Roman Abramovich seen as a frontrunner to acquire it.
Viñoly is collaborating with the architects Kohn Pedersen Fox on the plan put forward by Hussey, a former Land Securities executive. Chelsea has not made a decision to leave its Stamford Bridge home but has appointed Hussey's Almacantar vehicle, along with KPF, to draw up plans for a 55,000-capacity stadium to be situated to the south-east of the power station.
New York-based Viñoly wants to retain as much of the power station as possible, keeping structural changes to a minimum. His new plan is thought to be less ambitious than REO's 750,000 sq metre development of 3,400 homes, as well as shops and offices. The power station's distinct four white chimneys were to be demolished and rebuilt, as they were deemed to be "beyond repair".
But Keith Garner, an architect and member of a local campaign group, said: "Jamming a large football stadium against Battersea power station is a bad idea." The Battersea Power Station Community Group wants the turbine hall turned into an exhibition centre – a showcase for British design and manufacturing – with offices and flats on the upper floors. Garner held up the successful revamp of the former Dean Clough Mills in Halifax, once the world's largest carpet factory, as an example. He has tried to get Google UK interested, which is based in nearby Victoria and needs more space.
REO's lenders, Lloyds Banking Group and Ireland's National Management Asset Agency, are keen to recoup their money. Nama is thought to prefer Chelsea, while other potential bidders for Battersea include the Malaysian property group SP Setia, UK developers including Berkeley, Development Securities and British Land, along with sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms such as Blackstone.
Old Wembley Stadium gates to go up for auction
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 1, 2011
Perfect stocking filler? Timber gates weighing several tonnes each expected to fetch £10,000 in Sotheby's pre-Christmas sale
A pair of gates coming up for auction next week could be the perfect Christmas gift for a football fan with a very large hole in their front wall: each of the gigantic timber gates from the old Wembley Stadium, painfully familiar to millions of fans who queued impatiently waiting for them to swing open, is five metres tall and more than five metres wide.
Although they will be sold at Sotheby's next week by the specialist sporting memorabilia auctioneer Graham Budd, estimated at up to £10,000, bidders will have to take their awesome dimensions on trust. Each weighs several tonnes, and they are too heavy to move to the salesroom.
They were too big even for the Brooking Trust, one of the largest collections of historic doors and windows in the world, whose founder, Charles Brooking, bought them when the 1923 Empire Stadium at Wembley was torn down to the anguish of fans across the world, before the present building by Lord Foster rose in its place.
Brooking began collecting windows and other architectural fragments as a child, and was given a garden shed store as a birthday present by his parents to get the collection out of his bedroom – the first of many stores the ever-expanding collection has outgrown. The trustees are looking for a permanent home, but have sadly concluded that the Wembley gates, built in 1923 by Samuel Elliot and Sons of Reading, are a liability rather than a star exhibit.
A spokesman said: "Regrettably it is the size and weight which negates their retention in the collection. It is with sadness that they and the other pieces are being released; we have held them for the last 11 years hoping to find a way of displaying them, but without success. The funds raised from the auction will go fully to maintaining the collection and helping towards the acquisition of a museum and learning centre – the Brooking Architectural Museum Trust."
Chelsea in talks to leave Stamford Bridge and move to Earls Court
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 8, 2010
Exclusive: Chelsea FC considering move to site of Earls Court Exhibition Centre – but move could torpedo plans to build 8,000 home complex
Chelsea Football Club are in talks to quit their 105-year old home at Stamford Bridge and build a ground on the site of the soon- to-be-demolished Earls Court exhibition centre to hold at least 60,000 spectators, the Guardian has learned.
The Premier League champions, owned by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, are considering a move to the prime west London site just half a mile from their existing home amid growing concern they are losing ground to rivals with bigger and bigger stadiums.
Discussions have been kept secret because the move could torpedo a plan by the leading architect Sir Terry Farrell to transform Earls Court into a new residential enclave with more than 8,000 new homes. The scheme enters the latest phase of public consultation this week and is being undertaken with fellow landowners, Transport for London and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
"The discussion is now on again," said a source close to the deal. "It is largely because the owners are progressing alternative uses for the site and there's lots more urgency for Chelsea to make a decision. From Chelsea's point of view this is their last opportunity to get a new ground and stay in the same area they have been in for over a century."
Chelsea flirted with acquiring the same site four years ago but talks came to nothing. Now the site is larger and Chelsea's chairman, Bruce Buck, has been warned the club faces a "deficit" as a result of Stamford Bridge's lack of capacity.
"There have been discussions about it and the club is clearly considering its next step," confirmed a source close to Chelsea, who added that negotiations are at an early stage and no deal has been signed.
The club has met the site's owner, Capital and Counties, in recent months and Chelsea and its advisers are holding "a series of key meetings to decide whether to pursue a bid or not", according to a source close to the talks.
A new stadium would not be ready until 2015 because Earls Court is scheduled to host the 2012 Olympic volleyball competition before the exhibition centre is demolished. After 73 years in which it has hosted gigs by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Oasis and Madonna, its economic viability has been compromised by the establishment of major new concert and conference venues elsewhere in London, including the 02 arena at the Millennium Dome.
Tonight Buck said it was "very difficult for us to make the philosophical decision that we are going to move on", but conceded that the lack of capacity at Stamford Bridge left it out of pocket compared with other clubs.
"Certainly we wouldn't leave west London or thereabouts and there are very few sites available," he said. "We have to do things with our other commercial activities to make up the deficit that is created by the fact we don't have a 60,000 seat stadium. We can't say that we will never move or have a new stadium but at the moment, it's not at the front of our agenda."
However, Chelsea insiders said Buck is keen to boost matchday takings because Uefa is introducing rules limiting the ability of super-rich owners to bankroll clubs without squaring spending with revenues. Despite winning the league last season, the club was only fifth in terms of average attendance in football's top flight behind Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool. Stamford Bridge accommodates around 41,000 fans compared with 76,000 at Manchester United's Old Trafford ground and 60,000 at Arsenal's Emirates stadium.
Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United recently made bids to occupy the 80,000 seat Olympic stadium.
The emergence of Chelsea's renewed interest in Earls Court is awkward for Capital and Counties, which has launched a public charm offensive for its housing project employing Edelman, the international public relations company. It is promoting the "four villages and a high street" vision for the area and declined to comment on negotiations with Chelsea.
"Our vision for Earls Court is for a world class residential-led development delivering thousands of new homes and jobs, and creating a remarkable new place in London," a spokesman said. "As part of that we maintain discussions with a wide range of stakeholders and neighbouring landowners including both local authorities, TfL, the GLA and the local community."
Is Gary Neville living in Teletubbyland with plans for his eco house?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 28, 2010
The Manchester United football star plans to build an eco-home which closely resembles that of the Teletubbies . . .
Manchester United star Gary Neville has revealed plans to build an underground "eco-bunker" (above) at his home in Lancashire. Locals have already dubbed it Teletubbyland (top). Artists' impressions of the £8m zero-carbon development, designed to merge seamlessly with the surrounding moorland, resemble something between a futuristic hobbit hole and the hideout of a rural Bond villain. The architects, meanwhile, have compared it with Skara Brae, a neolithic settlement in Orkney. Whatever inspired this hillside hideaway, its similarity to the Teletubby residence is hard to deny. Rumours of a plan to build a vacuum-cleaning dog named Noo-Noo are so far unconfirmed.