The new Spurs stadium: call it a home win | Art and design

IFor a moment, everything was devoted to the cheese room. It has been reported that the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium would offer its premium customers a selection of special cheeses, a concept that summed up how far football fans were from those black and white days, crispy voices, where one was everything what you had, an edible version of the brown balls that were hacked around the Flemish mud of these ancient fields – a distillation (conceptually speaking) of the catarrh of a million Capstans.

Which, says the story, was as it should be. In the tribal war of football, you do not want the food to be too good. And what could be more Waitrose, more metropolitan elite, more Highbury and Islington than a range of fermented curds? What might be less likely except perhaps CO₂ a fire retardant foam or blanket, to set fire to the belly?

Then he disappeared. Spurs President Daniel Levy announced that there was no and there had never been a cheese room in the stadium plans. There was an accompanying change in stadium presentation. If most of the advertising done in advance was about the treats of the highest paid customers – a glbad-walled "tunnel club", from which you can watch the teams prepare to get to the field; a "sky lounge" from where you will be able to see both the match and a breathtaking panorama of London. Christopher Lee now tells me that the project's architects, Populous, have stated that it is a priority to build a "democratic" stadium. This means, for example, large halls where all paying bettors can walk, a "market" where you can eat many types of foods and beers brewed on site. The idea of ​​a separate "business level" is, he says, "archaic". People who pay more "should not be in a little bubble".

The Tunnel Club and the Sky Lounge are still very present and no one should be under any illusions about the fact that the goal is not to maximize revenue at every opportunity, but in the narrative from Lee, "it's about experiences," and everyone is invited to join us. in.

He makes an badogy with the airlines and the intermediate clbades that they create between the economy and the companies. At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, there are 70 home boxes, compared with 150 at the 13 – year – old Emirates Stadium in Arsenal (which, like the former Wembley Olympic Stadium and the a new booth proposed for Fulham, was also designed by prolific Populous). . There are rather "lodges" – small semi-private dining rooms that could be hired by families or groups. These are still not cheap, of course, but it's still better than having the death sandwich that comes with a corporate zone that rings a stadium.

One could challenge Lee's concept of democracy, which emphasizes access to craft beer as a sign of equality. One could question on his badogy between the inert interior of a plane and the environment, hopefully, energizing a sports field. But judging by the visit of the first match played in the stadium – a match for under-18 against Southampton last Sunday – his design does what he says. The halls are generous, with sturdy but elegant finishes in polished concrete and steel painted blue. It's not like the old White Hart Lane, which I knew well, whose bunker-like interior gave the impression that the spectators felt like the survivors crammed with a nuclear fire, looking for crisps and tea at inadequate food counters. Nor is it about Wembley, the place where the Spurs spent their exile during the reconstruction of the stadium, whose gray hallways evoke the part-time conference center that it is in reality.

The food and drinks on offer, placed between cream pies and White Stilton Gold, are more varied and more imaginative than you think. Although the market is lively, there are also areas where the invitations to consume are relatively small. It just avoids feeling like a mall.

All of this is secondary – even now, at a time when matches are "experiences" – in the business of playing and watching football. Here, the stadium is at its best, achieving the desired combination of magnificence and intimacy, the stands being placed as close as possible to the edge of the field and the upper levels rising to the highest permitted angle. The height of the knee pad in front of each seat, which has become unnecessarily generous in some recent stadiums, is 4 cm shorter than in the Emirates, for example, allowing for greater compression. The design is also facilitated by technological advances in lawn growth lighting, which allows architects to worry less about sunshine.

The main topic of discussion is a unique bank of 17,500 seats at the south end of the field, which, besides the fact that it constitutes an imposing wall of humanity, contributes to an asymmetry that gives the character of the bowl. A winding horizon is emerging around the last level of the stands: it rises in the center of each stand to accommodate more seats and lowers in turns. This helps to create the feeling that you are in a single space, rather than in an bademblage of structures to observe.

The most important of all is the acoustics, an intangible element that largely depends on the success of the Spurs' investment of a billion pounds and more, and the first signs are good. The Under-18 game, intended to test stadium operations before more serious competitions, was limited to a crowd of less than half the capacity of 62,062 people, but those who were there tested the sound with old songs bouncing around their new house.

The new Tottenham Hotspur stadium tries to do a lot of things, to satisfy its multiple audiences and business imperatives while retaining what you might call the soul. An additional difficulty is added to the fact that using a mechanism quite amazing allowing the lawn to slide to reveal an artificial layer underneath, it will host football. The design does not bring all this complexity together in a coherent whole: the exterior, while communicating a generalized sense of punch and power, is out of order, with slender curves that gravitate against a rectangular grid of cladding panels. . with ideas borrowed here and there struggling to attract attention.

My daughter and I used to share a little joke when the old White Hart Lane appeared from the windows of the train. "It's the most beautiful building in London," I said. This was not the case, and the new one is not. In its ugliness, it looks like the outside of almost every stage of the Premier League, if not the world. And almost none of the Spurs fans rejoiced in their new home last Sunday, relieved to be there after a delayed opening of six months.

On what note will I leave you a moment. I will take a sabbatical leave until September, after which I will come back with new energy. Goodbye.