How to build a Football Stadium
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness”
- Frank Gehry
Maribor, Slovenia. Architecture is all around the second city; The glorious gothic cathedral, a medieval castle, the brutalist soviet era bus station. Then, like a spaceship grounded, the Ljudski Vrt, home of NK Maribor.
Quaint residential streets on a Saturday evening are only disturbed by the ultras congregating outside their dimly lit emporium, periodically lighting flares. A park sparsely populated with pre drinkers, and the first hint, through the trees, of a stadium. Angular floodlight pylons lighting the path, police horses hiding in the bushes. The futuristic curves, the faded perspex and the ultra murals. Brutalist concrete swirls against the pastel colours of the seats. Its subterranean pitch adding to the intimacy, the stadium has more curves than Andrea Pirlo. This is the ‘Peoples Garden’, and tonight it hosts a Slovenian PrvaLiga match. Why does this stadium look this way? How exactly do you build a stadium?
OFIS Arhitekti, based in Ljubljana, were selected as the planners for this project. A highly respected practice led by Špela Videčnik and partner Rok Oman. This team has won many honours, including the prestigious Mies van der Rohe award, and for this stadium, they received a Silver IOC/IAKS medal.
© OFIS arhitekti
“The basic leaning point was this existing arch and that was stimulating, or I would say the special challenge. And the second, of course, is all those regulations which are changing all the time, so we have to be adaptable. It started low on the edges because it touches the ground. And then, it was kind of a mixture of this waving, and also a functional element in the middle of the football field where the views are best. So we wanted to have the maximum number of seats (in the middle) and on the edges, the minimum. And then, what was interesting, we maintained and established the security zones with architectural elements. The base established a kind of roof for all the services and they also have some light insertions”, explains Rok Oman.
The arch that Rok describes, is the main grandstand, the tribuna Marcos Tavares, named after the Brazilian striker, who scored 159 in 436 games, retiring in 2022, with Slovenian citizenship. It is clearly the eye catcher. As people start to filter in, especially in the South Jug, it starts to come to life. It has meaning, purpose. Flags and drums pulse, an organism synergises with the structure that OFIS designed. The stand undulates like a visualisation of music. The players make their way onto the field, the architect's vision is realised for another 90 minutes as people cheer, sing, and give the stadium a heartbeat. Red flares offer swirling thick smoke into the sky, bright crimson contrasting against the cold concrete.
NK Maribor has two main rivals. One is their opponents tonight, NS Mura from Prekmurje, with whom they contest the Prekmurje–Styria derby. Another, is the capital city club, NK Olimpija Ljubljana. Rok and his team learnt about this visceral enmity the hard way. “I remember when Špela came to a meeting, she had, coincidentally, a green dress on, but of course, a different kind of tone. Attendees asked if this was a kind of provocation, you know, because we are also coming from Ljubljana, so we are kind of opposition, but it's kind of a competition” tells Oman. Colours are a huge part of an identity for any club. Maribor, the Violets, took inspiration from Fiorentina. In 1961, in Yugoslavia, the players had to paint the kits themselves, as it was all but impossible to get hold of purple material.
On the pitch, Maribor took the lead in the 30th minute to the delight of the Viole fans, as flares illuminated the night sky. Before the smoke could stop dancing, Mura hit back. The noise is dialled up and this masterpiece is rocking. In the second half, Maribor restored their lead, the game finished 3-1, and the fire brigade did the walk of shame to dispose of some pyro on more than one occasion.
Fans pile out onto the quiet streets of Maribor, a successful evening on the pitch and a release from their day-to-day worries, all within their building. A building is the ultimate physical representation of a place, a brand, an identity. It loses all meaning without people to give it life. The way the players, the fans, the staff move around and interact with the space and the social acts that happen within it. The curves and the straight lines, the seats, the tunnels, the floodlights, the colours. All of these things and more help to nurture the unique culture each team has. This is how to build a football stadium. As Frank Lloyd Wright put it, “buildings like people must first be sincere, must be true.”
