Populous-designed Cathedral stadium set to replace Milan's San Siro

Football clubs Inter Milan and AC Milan have announced that the iconic San Siro will be replaced by a stadium designed by architecture studio Populous.

Named the Cathedral, the new stadium in Milan will be home to Italian top-tier football clubs AC Milan and Internazionale Milano, also known as Inter Milan. It will replace the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, which is widely known as the San Siro and has been home to the clubs since 1926.

The Cathedral stadium will replace the San Siro

Designed by Populous, the form of the new stadium was informed by two of the city's best-known buildings, the Duomo di Milano cathedral and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping arcade.

The 60,000-seat venue will have a rectangular shape and be surrounded by vertical fins. These fins will extend outwards from the stadium to support a glass wall that will enclose a space described by the studio as a "sunlit galleria".

Read:

“It’s probably the most well-known place in Milan”

Inside, the stadium's bowl was designed to be the "most intimate in Europe", by placing fans as close as possible to the pitch.

The stadium will be topped with photovoltaic panels and rainwater will be collected from the roof and reused.

It will be surrounded by a concourse informed by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

"The Cathedral will become one of the most iconic stadiums in world football," said Populous managing director Christopher Lee.

"It will create a world-class, modern, and truly bespoke home for the legendary clubs of AC Milan and FC Internazionale Milano and form the beating heart of a new civic district," he continued.

"It will be a stadium for all Milanese to enjoy for generations to come that is true to the city and honours its heritage. A stadium of Milano and for Milano."

The seating bowl was designed to be the "most intimate in Europe"

The Cathedral will be built alongside the existing San Siro, which will then be demolished, as part of a redevelopment of the stadium's site.

The area will be turned into a pedestrian-only district, with existing car parking moved underground and topped with more than 110,000 square metres of green space.

Read:

Angelo Renna proposes turning San Siro into tree-covered coronavirus memorial

The San Siro is one of the world's best-known stadiums. Designed by architect Ulisse Stacchini and extensively remodelled for the 1990 World Cup by Ragazzi and Partners, it was described by designer Fabio Novembre as "probably the most well-known place in Milan".

Its replacement has been controversial, with architects, critics and heritage bodies critical of its demolition.

Last year Italian architect Angelo Renna proposed turning the stadium into a coronavirus memorial by filling it with 35,000 cypress trees.

The renders are courtesy of Populous.

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Commenter calls Sky Pool "an environmental catastrophe"

In this week's comments update, readers are debating the heating costs of the controversial Sky Pool at the Embassy Gardens development in London and discussing other top stories.

Residents at the Embassy Gardens development in southwest London claim its Sky Pool is too cold to be used in winter, despite heating costs of £450 a day.

The transparent swimming pool, which is suspended 35 metres in the air between two buildings, should be closed during the colder months to save money and energy, according to residents.

"We are livid," said one Embassy Gardens leaseholder.

"They can use the pool as a high-altitude ice skating rink"

Commenters are divided. "This is an environmental catastrophe," said Kath Scott. "Why are we allowing things like this to be built in a climate emergency?"

Mr Sustainable agreed: "Shame on HAL for proposing such an irresponsible feature. Architects should know better and advise clients, even if it means saving on budget."

"I live there," replied Tom. "It is a development sold with an asset that has a service charge funding it. No one asked me to live there or to pay for it so I don't get why residents would complain. Go live elsewhere if you don't like it."

"They could use the pool as a high-altitude ice skating rink!" suggested Amaury Rafael Arroyo.

Should the Sky Pool be turned off during winter? Join the discussion ›

Balenciaga designs concrete Berlin store to reference the city's modernist architecture

Commenter thinks concrete Balenciaga store "looks like a city's sewer system"

Readers aren't sold on fashion brand Balenciaga's new Berlin store, which continues the company's Raw Architecture aesthetic and boasts monolithic concrete slabs and distressed surfaces.

"Looks like some large city's sewer system junction," said Apsco Radiales.

Muckers270 wasn't keen either: "Keyword equals 'distressed'. It is. I am."

"Architects are so in love with this concrete ideology that they don't see how depressing it is in reality," added Prbslv. "If this design reflects anything German, it is the interiors of Hitler's underground bunker. Modernism should be reserved for bunkers, sewage canals, prisons, and maybe hospitals."

What do you think of the store? Join the discussion ›

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Rogers dies aged 88

Reader calls Richard Rogers a "wonderful, gracious man and great architect"

Commenters are mourning the loss of high-tech architecture pioneer Richard Rogers, who designed the Centre Pompidou and Lloyd's building. He passed away at his London home this week aged 88.

"Wonderful, gracious man and a great architect," said John Hix. "It was a pleasure to have known him. The design world will miss Sir Richard."

Wave Notation agreed: "How not to admire the work and character this giant gave and has shown in the last fifty years? Thank you sir, your light shines on."

"Such an incommensurate loss! Sir Richard has given us practical examples of his innovative ideas – combining high-tech materials and processes, modular and mass-produced elements, bringing industrial design and architecture together. All of this whilst being a humble, cheerful and very decent human being. Truly one of a kind," concluded Everaldo Amorim.

How will you remember Rogers? Join the discussion ›

McDonald's opens "UK's first net-zero restaurant"

Commenter calls McDonald's first net-zero carbon restaurant "lipstick on a pig"

Readers aren't convinced by claims that McDonald's has opened the UK's first net-zero carbon restaurant building. The restaurant was built using natural or recycled materials and powered by a combination of wind turbines and solar panels.

"Add as many windmills and solar panels as you wish," said JayCee. "The beef and fast-food industries are not, and never will be, sustainable. This is lipstick on a pig. Pun intended."

Xavier Smales agreed: "A 'net-zero' restaurant selling intensively farmed meat, that you have to drive to. Another shining example of holistic sustainability."

"With an eventual plant-based menu, will the ground coffee actually be made from ground?" asked Alan Sims.

Are readers being cynical? Join the discussion ›

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Dezeen is the world's most commented architecture and design magazine, receiving thousands of comments each month from readers. Keep up to date on the latest discussions on our comments page.

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Valley by MVRDV photographed near completion in Amsterdam

Three angular peaks with jutting stone-clad balconies and windows make up Valley, a mixed-use high-rise by architecture studio MVRDV that is nearing completion in the Netherlands.

In new photos revealed by Rotterdam-based MVRDV, the 75,000-square-metre building is captured in Amsterdam's financial district without its scaffolding.

Valley by MVRDV has been photographed nearing completion

Valley is due to open in 2022, one year later than expected, with 200 apartments and spaces for offices, shops, restaurants and bars.

It was first revealed by MVRDV in Amsterdam in 2015 after the studio won a competition to design it for developer EDGE Technologies.

The mixed-use high-rise comprises three peaks

Valley is composed of three conjoined buildings of different heights, linked by a terraced podium that emulates the low area of land between mountains, giving the project its name.

The tallest peak reaches 100 metres in height and contains a bar across its two upper storeys.

Its facades shift between glazing to jutting windows and balconies

The faces of each peak vary across each side, shifting from glass walls to rockier surfaces composed of stone-clad terraces, bay windows, and balconies.

On its jagged edges, the building also incorporates a "green layer", where 13,000 plants, trees and shrubs have been planted by landscape designer Piet Oudolf. This aspect will be maintained by automatic irrigation systems as well as a team of gardeners.

The windows and balconies are clad in stone

The plants, which are not currently visible, "will be allowed an initial period to grow and become acclimatised, before the building officially opens in the spring of 2022," according to MVRDV.

"The greenery will then reach its final appearance gradually over the coming years," the studio added.

Its jagged facades will eventually be lined with greenery

After revealing Valley's design in 2015, MVRDV's co-founder Winy Maas said the building's design is intended to evoke a "village green".

"The houses have bay windows with beautiful views and large balconies with lots of vegetation, turning the whole building into a kind of village green," he said.

The stone cladding continues inside the building

Oudolf's landscape design has been developed to ensure year-round greenery and is hoped to boost the wellbeing of the building's occupants.

The uneven exterior of the building is echoed internally at its heart, where a large atrium is intended to appear as though it has been carved out from a rock.

Read:

MVRDV's "mountainous" Future Towers provides low-cost accommodation in India

Named The Grotto, it is clad in stone and lit by two giant skylights, and serves as a foyer and shared living space for residents.

According to the studio, no two apartments in Valley are the same, meaning there is a wide variety of housing types. However, each one is orientated to maximise daylight.

Valley's interior is intended to look as though it is carved from rock

All of the apartments also have access to planted terraces. This includes those on the fourth and fifth floors of the building, dubbed the "valley floor", which will double as a public park.

According to MVRDV, the project is hoped to make the city's financial district "a more liveable and complete urban quarter".

MVRDV is a Rotterdam-based architecture studio that was founded in 1991 by Maas alongside Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. The firm has also recently completed the Ilot Queyries housing development in Bordeaux and opened Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen – the "world's first publicly accessible art depot".

The photography is by Marcel Steinbach courtesy of MVRDV.

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Dezeen's top 10 designs for the metaverse from 2021

Lifelike virtual humans and an NFT house are among 10 metaverse designs blurring the line between the physical and digital world, which we've rounded up as part of our review of 2021.

As coronavirus restrictions continued to limit interactions in real life, this year saw online environments step up to fulfil many of the same functions with the help of blockchain technology, as well as virtual and augmented reality.

"The virtual world and the real world will integrate," Amber Jae Slooten of virtual fashion house The Fabricant argued at Dezeen Club's metaverse meet-up in April.

"There will be like a virtual layer on top of reality that you'll be able to switch on and off," she added. "And there will be virtual worlds that you can go into."

Below, we've charted this emergence of a parallel digital universe by outlining some of the major milestone projects from the past 12 months, ranging from Beeple's record-breaking NFT sale all the way to Facebook's rebrand as metaverse company Meta.

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Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple

In March, a jpeg collage by American artist Beeple went under the hammer at Christie's for more than $69 million, making it the most expensive digital image ever.

This was made possible by a non-fungible token (NFT), a blockchain-based certificate of authenticity that can be linked to a virtual art piece, making it possible to buy, sell and collect work that exists purely digitally.

The sale was followed by a frenzy of high-value auctions, while digital designers declared that the technology would usher in a "creative and artistic renaissance", allowing them to monetise their work for the first time without relying on commissions from clients or galleries.

Find out more about the Everydays ›

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Mars House by Krista Kim

Beeple's landmark sale gave rise to a number of other firsts including the "first digital fragrance" and the "first NFT digital house".

Envisioned by artist Krista Kim, this was sold on online marketplace SuperRare at a higher price than many real-world homes, despite existing only as a 3D environment to be experienced in VR.

The digital property served as a case study for the potential copyright issues associated with non-tangible artworks, as Kim and her rendering artist Mateo Sanz Pedemonte were later embroiled in a dispute about who owned the intellectual property of the project.

Find out more about Mars House ›

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Classic BurningFor by Buffalo London and The Fabricant

Flickering blue and orange flames engulf this virtual trainer by Buffalo London and The Fabricant, which can only be "worn" by superimposing it on photographs of the buyer using specialist 3D software.

Its release in January of this year reportedly marked the first time an established brand made a virtual wearable available for purchase on its website alongside its regular, physical products.

Find out more about the Classic BurningFor ›

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The Shipping by Andrés Reisinger

After rising to fame on Instagram, Andrés Reisinger was among a vanguard of digital designers who managed to monetise their work through NFTs, with his debut drop of 10 virtual furniture pieces (top and above) auctioned off in less than 10 minutes for a total of $450,000.

The "impossible" seats and tables in the collection can be used to build games and animations from scratch or placed in any existing 3D virtual space, including open worlds such as Minecraft, Decentraland and Somnium Space.

Find out more about The Shipping ›

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MetaHuman Creator by Unreal Engine

The MetaHuman Creator is an app launched by Fortnite-developer Epic Games that allows anyone to create digital people with lifelike traits from wrinkles to broken capillaries in a matter of minutes.

These can then be animated by developers using motion-capture technology and slotted into their video games and animations, saving them both time and money in a bid to democratise the creation of hyperrealistic virtual worlds.

Find out more about the MetaHuman Creator ›

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Fortnite collection by Balenciaga

Balenciaga transformed its sock-style Speed trainers into pickaxes and restyled handbags as gliders to create a collection of high-fashion weaponry and clothing that players of online game Fortnite can use to kit out their avatars.

Previously, the fashion brand collaborated with Epic Games to create its own video game Afterworld, which transported users to a secret rave in the forest and introduced them to Balenciaga's Autumn Winter 2021 collection.

Find out more about the Fortnite collection ›

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Threaded Thresholds by Space Popular

Instead of clicking on tabs or links to switch between different online environments, design studio Space Popular has proposed a new navigational infrastructure for the metaverse that would allow users to simply pull back a virtual curtain to reveal the next 3D world.

Founders Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, who shared the concept in their manifesto for the Dezeen 15 online festival, said this system would act as an antidote to the "discriminatory and opaque nature of locked doors".

"Such textiles only become apparent once we aim to touch them, pulling apart in mid-air the environment we are in and allowing us to access another," the duo explained.

Find out more about Treaded Tresholds ›

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The Firsts Collection by Imogen Heap and Endlesss

In response to rising concerns about the environmental impact and copyright issues associated with NFTs, musician Imogen Heap created her debut collection of six audiovisual NFTs to "set the bar for what digital art can and should be".

The entire drop removed 100 times more carbon from the atmosphere than it generated, as Heap invested five per cent of her own earnings into carbon capture while the remaining profits were split equally between all contributors, programmed into the code and listed in the description of each NFT.

Find out more about The Firsts Collection ›

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Animator Overcoat by The Fabricant and Toni Maticevski

Visitors to this summer's Australian Fashion Week were able to snap photos of themselves in a digital Matrix-style overcoat with the iridescent finish of molten metal and spikes to rival those of a sea urchin.

The wearable was created by local designer Toni Maticevski and digital fashion house The Fabricant, which made history when it designed the first digital-only dress to be auctioned off as an NFT back in 2019.

Find out more about the Animator Overcoat ›

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Meta logo by Facebook 

Facebook announced in October that it would be changing its name to Meta and focusing on adapting its products for the metaverse, in a bid to stay relevant with younger users who are increasingly abandoning its social networks in favour of immersive virtual worlds such as Roblox and Fortnite.

This gear shift is epitomised in the company's new logo, a mashup between an infinity loop and the letter M that is designed to be experienced from different angles so it suits both 2D and 3D environments.

Find out more about the Meta logo ›

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Atypical layouts feature inside BBOA's Suipacha apartment block in Argentina

No two apartments are alike in a brick-clad apartment building in the central Argentine city of Rosario, designed by architecture firm BBOA.

The Suipacha building occupies a corner in Barrio Pichincha, a neighbourhood just beyond downtown Rosario. Once a fairly quiet district dominated by middle-class homes, the area has become livelier and more diverse in the past decade.

BBOA designed the apartments in the block with unusual layouts

The 550-square-metre building sits on a 110-square-metre lot that formerly held a single-family house. The blocky, five-storey building rises 13.6 metres.

"There is a maximum use of the ground and the permitted height, in accordance with the urban code and building regulations," said local firm BBOA, or Balparda Brunel Oficina de Arquitectura.

Balconies jut out from various windows

The building's ground level encompasses two garages and retail space, while the upper floors contain a total of six apartments. A lower corner of the building is carved away to form an entrance alcove.

"You access from the void in the corner," the architects said. "We wanted to generate tension with the weight of the cantilever."

Brick lattices cover portions of glazing

Based on its market research, the developer of the Suipacha building aimed to construct a building with six units. Rather than using standardised layouts, BBOA decided to mix things up.

All of the apartments have different floor plans – an approach that optimises the virtues of each unit and reflects the diversity of the surrounding neighbourhood, the team said.

Interiors are finished with plywood-clad surfaces

There are no corridors in the building. Instead, apartments are located directly off a shared staircase and shared elevator.

Studio apartments, ranging from 32 to 35 square metres, are located on floors one and four. The top one has access to a private rooftop terrace.

Concrete floors and ceilings also feature inside

A one-bedroom, 52-square-metre unit is located on the second floor. Levels three and four have two-bedroom apartments, both of which are two storeys. One is 72 square metres, while the other totals 95 square metres.

In the two-storey units, the public area is on the upper level and the bedrooms are below – another atypical approach to apartment layouts.

Read:

DROO creates space for work and study in City Approach apartments

Interior finishes include concrete floors and ceilings, along with cabinetry and wall panels made of plywood with a special coating. Glazed doors provide access to balconies.

Exterior walls consist of locally made brick with a grey-brown pigment. In certain areas, bricks were used to form lattices that allow light to stream into the apartments.

The apartment block is located on a corner in the Barrio Pichincha neighbourhood

Various-sized windows, which seem randomly placed, hint at the non-standardised layout found within the building.

"The variation in the exterior distribution reflects the uniqueness of the configuration," the team said.

The surrounding area has become more lively and diverse in recent years

Other projects by BBOA include a housing development in Rosario that features white buildings with angled roofs, and a government-backed apartment complex in Granadero Baigorria that consists of different-sized buildings clad in pink brick.

The photography is by Javier Agustin Rojas.

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