An Alternative Anfield Stadium

[AK78]

Sorry, but I'll never want to grounshare with the Blushite. I'd rather stay at Anfield and not have a new stadium than go down that route.

 

 

yeah agree 100%

 

no way could ever share with the bitters no matter how much cash it woulkd save us

[Dougie Do'ins]

Sorry, but I'll never want to grounshare with the Blushite. I'd rather stay at Anfield and not have a new stadium than go down that route.

Hopefully theres more truth to that than you think.

[redrosetints]

Sorry mate just ca'nt go down the ground share road with you.

But I think were alot nearer to it than some people might think.

If they ever get started were going to have a very expensive hole in the park.What happens if the fat controller struggles to get the extra money to carry on the build. ?

The first thing he's dose is look for someone to split the cost with.

 

He's right on the phone to Bill the bender.

Dont forget it was Gillett who made promises about not sharing.

Hicks as we all know will deal with the Devil at the right price.

The Devil in this case being Bill the bender.

 

Ah, groundshare and the Yanks, that would be the absolute worst scenario. No way jose and Id be right with you there. In hindsight, looking over this whole mess and what we want from the club, IMHO groundsharing may not have been the worst outcome. Increased reveune, with the risk halved. No sell out to yanks or Dubai or anywhere. In those circumstances, someone like Miskelly or even Steve Morgan could easily have stumped up the money to buy us and players. Not an ideal scenario, but from where Im sitting, a brand shiny new, WOW stadium, the vehicle to take us forward, is both a noose around our necks and our salvation.

[redrosetints]

Sorry, but I'll never want to grounshare with the Blushite. I'd rather stay at Anfield and not have a new stadium than go down that route.

 

And scrap for 4th with Villa, Citeh, dem Blues and Portsmouth ?

 

Id love to stay at Anfield, but unless we increase capacity, it just a non starter if we want to move forward.

[Anubis]

And scrap for 4th with Villa, Citeh, dem Blues and Portsmouth ?

 

Id love to stay at Anfield, but unless we increase capacity, it just a non starter if we want to move forward.

We can't stay anyway because we probably wouldn't be able to meet the interest payments on the loans. At this moment in time, it's very fucking depressing, but we can't just give in.

 

Aren't we scrapping for 4th at the moment?

[Dougie Do'ins]

And scrap for 4th with Villa, Citeh, dem Blues and Portsmouth ?

 

Id love to stay at Anfield, but unless we increase capacity, it just a non starter if we want to move forward.

I'd sooner slit my throat than share with them bastards. It may be ok for you but you wont have them on your doorstep.

[redrosetints]

We can't stay anyway because we probably wouldn't be able to meet the interest payments on the loans. At this moment in time, it's very fucking depressing, but we can't just give in.

 

Aren't we scrapping for 4th at the moment?

 

Yes we are and like you have pointed out, we are on a real tightrope in terms of funding the debt we now have. Thats exactly my point and why, groundshare, with no Yanks, no sell out other than to LFC people and it would ave been a better option, in hindsight.

 

So instead of having leveraged weetabix, we would have had Morgan or Miskelly, no debts, cash for players and men in charge who loved the club.

[Red_or_Dead]

When they called in the second design because they said it was too expensive, they said the 'new' design (the latest HKS one, which we have now), would have the best elements of both designs. This looks like the Parrybowl with a 'kop' at one end. Not impressed to be honest.

[Dougie Do'ins]

If you've ever been to Anfield on a none match day its Still quite a busy place.

Tourists/coach loads of school kids doing the tour the whole package.

Go over the park and you'll see the difference.

Ground share and we'd be giving them a helping hand.

The only help I want to give those cunts is moving to Kirkby. The sooner the fucking better.

[redrosetints]

I'd sooner slit my throat than share with them bastards. It may be ok for you but you wont have them on your doorstep.

 

Again I understand that, but if its simply pride, well thats not putting LFcs best interests at heart is it. Although of course I acknowledge its different for me as an ooter day to day, the financial and playing future of the club should be more important that any pride issues.

 

What Id say is that on a scale of 1 to 10, groundsharing, enabling us to contineu to work in the 'Liverpool Way', with LFC men running the club etc, is slightly higher on that scale, for me, than where we are now.

[Dougie Do'ins]

Again I understand that, but if its simply pride, well thats not putting LFcs best interests at heart is it. Although of course I acknowledge its different for me as an ooter day to day, the financial and playing future of the club should be more important that any pride issues.

 

What Id say is that on a scale of 1 to 10, groundsharing, enabling us to contineu to work in the 'Liverpool Way', with LFC men running the club etc, is slightly higher on that scale, for me, than where we are now.

I'm just off to the chemist for a packet of blades. Just in case.

[Karl_b]

In the latest issue of BD Magazine there is an article about Ian Ritchie, who Dave received the information from in the fist post, and he mentions TLW in it!

 

Edit - here it is:

 

Goodbye Westfield, Hello Anfield?

28 November 2008

 

Ian Ritchie is an architect prepared to break with convention. He tells Amanda Baillieu how his involuntary departure from the Westfield development at Shepherd’s Bush hasn’t deterred him from standing up for what he believes in

 

Ian Ritchie has a reputation for being difficult, at least around journalists. He distrusts the media and still nurses a resentment against the late critic Martin Pawley, who slipped into his review of the architect’s Ecology Gallery at the Natural History Museum that Ritchie thought its patron, Princess Diana, looked like someone in a soap opera because of the amount of make-up she wore.

 

His throwaway comment made the front page of the Evening Standard on the day the gallery opened and Ritchie had to be smuggled in through the back door, where he came face to face with the princess.

 

“We were lined up and she stopped at me and said, ‘I thought you were meant to be working in France’. She was very well briefed.”

 

But while he claims to dislike being under the media spotlight, he’s found it hard to avoid. Earlier this year, his housing scheme at Potters Field next to London’s Tower Bridge was already on site when it was brought to an abrupt halt after a bust-up between the client and the council. The eight flowerpot-shaped towers had been described by the planning inspector as “world-class architecture… which people would experience with marvel, wonder and delight”.

 

Ritchie was incensed at the way he’d been treated. “The leader of Southwark Council, Nick Stanton, wouldn’t even talk to me,” he says. He retaliated by issuing a statement in order to put his side of the story. “The decision by Southwark Council and Berkeley Homes to agree to seek, from other architects, a new design upon the same site, to a very similar brief, is regrettable,” it said. “It is difficult to comprehend, and is beyond the issue of architecture.”

 

This summer, there was another disappointment when clients cancelled his proposed new bridge at Stratford-upon-Avon, claiming the cost of the project had spiralled from £2 million to £3.3 million. Once again, the Ritchie PR machine swung into operation. His statement disputed the figures, which he said were a result of “delays and inflation”. The clients were taken task for “bowing to nimbyism” and “hiding behind figures which were of their own making”.

 

Gutsy use of materials

 

His exasperation may come from that fact that despite being one of the stars of his generation, he has built rather less in this country than one might expect. His work always gets enthusiastic, even ecstatic reviews, partly because of his gutsy use of materials and technical ingenuity. Some of his best work has been for arts organisations, including the concert platform in Crystal Palace Park; the temporary home of the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford; and the production centre for Plymouth’s Theatre Royal — shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2003 — which takes its cue from the strange, awkward beauty of the shoreline.

 

But he also needs clients who enjoy and can respond to his provocative way of working. “I like to go inside the brain of the person I’m meeting and see if I can influence them in three meetings’ time,” he says. So when Ritchie was introduced to Chelsfield directors Nigel Hugill and Robin Butler in 1997, it seemed he’d found a developer who liked his approach and who, despite his lack of retail experience, was prepared to commission him to design a big new shopping centre next to London’s Westway.

 

He started by making a series of wordless presentations simply showing them a picture of a hat on top of a hill town. When pressed, he used the analogy of a typical Yorkshire village, explaining that instead of a mall with standard shop fronts, there’d be open streets and columns, and no doors to lock. He also wanted to have 1,000 sheep grazing on nearby Shepherd’s Bush Green.

 

“The building he’d designed broke all the rules of retail,” says Hugill. “For a start it was naturally ventilated, with a high-tensile roof to keep it cool in summer while protecting shoppers from rain, but [which would] still allow a feeling of connectedness with the outside.” The other image he drew was of a heart, showing how this part of London could be revived by shopping and new public transport to connect it to the wider city.

 

When Australian developer Westfield took over the development in 2004, the shopping centre was already on site, but it was clear the new developer didn’t like the scheme it had inherited. It wanted to build a traditional US-style mall — bright, big and brash. Ritchie needed to be kept on board, however, because he had won the planning permission for the previous developer. He recounts with dry amusement the experience of negotiating with Westfield. “Let’s just say that over the three or four dinners I had with [Westfield] in Mayfair, I was never allowed to bring anyone with me.”

 

Public infrastructure

 

He said he wanted to be kept on board to do the new public infrastructure, which included two new tube stations and sidings for Central line tube trains under the site. “They couldn’t believe it. They said: ‘But you’re walking way from £10 million of fees.’ I told them that the stations would be here a lot longer than their shopping centre.”

 

Yet the Westfield building, which opened last month, has been built “virtually as we designed it”. Although, he adds, “the external architecture and urban spaces were trashed”, referring to the replacement of the fabric roof and the cladding — which was to have been specially treated copper that would have turned blue instead of green — and, of course, the sheep.

 

Ritchie admits that losing the project was a shock, but says good things came out of it. ‘‘There was the scale of thinking about the city on a big site like that, and actually doing it rather than it being a theoretical thing. It was exciting and challenging as a studio, and we handled it quite easily. The tragedy was that it was being built, and then it stopped.”

 

The office’s first UK exhibition is now showing at Liverpool University. He chose the city because it’s where he studied. He has been a passionate Liverpool FC supporter ever since, and one of the exhibits is a proposal for a new Anfield stadium, which he designed in seven days after seeing the club’s own scheme by US firm HKS.

 

“I wrote to [Liverpool FC’s] chief executive Rick Parry and listed all the things that were wrong... I told him: “The designs you’ve got are rubbish”. He replied that they would be changed during RIBA Stage E. I sent a new design to New York, where Parry and the club’s owners, George Gillett and Tom Hicks, were meeting but didn’t get a reply. So I posted the entire lot on [fan website] Liverpool Way.” His design received a lukewarm response as most preferred the HKS design and couldn’t understand why Ritchie was getting so worked up.

 

But getting worked up is what makes him unusual and, despite the prickly exterior, surprisingly likable. The notion of public duty, of a civic and civil society, is still something he cares passionately about — the list of public appointments he has held runs to several pages — and he feels a great injustice when those around him don’t see the world the same way. Local authorities, journalists, “the unrestrained market that’s enveloped English football”, Australians and even princesses have all been given a dressing-down for their failure to see the big picture.

His latest target is Bovis Lend Lease, the developer of the athletes’ village for the 2012 London Olympics. As one of the most respected of the 43 firms on the framework list for the project, it seemed Ritchie would almost certainly bag one of the first housing blocks, especially since he’d worked before with Nigel Hugill, now boss of Lend Lease boss.

 

But it didn’t quite work out . He left the project this summer, claiming on the firm’s website that this was partly due to too much other work. Now he says he just didn’t want to put his name to a project that “felt alien to London’s urbanity”. Like others on the framework, he fears that architects were being bought in too late, and he worried that the scale was wrong. He proposed a scale of between six and eight floors, and was concerned that the 10-storey block of flats would only have one lift.

 

“I told [bovis Lend Lease], there’s a risk we’re building slums. But the answer came back: ‘We’ve got to deliver, the Olympics must go on’, which is what I feared. It does seem the scope for the architect is very limited, but I don’t do window-dressing.”

 

With that thought, he’s off to see Leonard Cohen, sitting in Hugill’s box at the O2 Centre, after telling me he wants to read a draft of the interview before its published because, knowing journalists, it’ll probably be all wrong.

[Trumo]

I got this email, and the guy asked me to post it on here for everyone to see:

 

Dear Fans,

 

I am a Liverpool supporter since 1965. I studied architecture in the city 65-68.

Like many of us, I am increasingly frustrated by the distancing of the 'club' from the supporters as a result of the unrestrained 'free market' that has enveloped English football.

 

With the help of my colleagues, we have designed an ALTERNATIVE NEW ANFIELD seating 75,000 which can be built for £300m, probably less.

 

We did this in one week, and sent it to Hicks, Gillett and Parry along with a summary cost estimate before their meeting in NY on 9th January 2008. We sent a hard copy to Rick Parry at Anfield. There has been no reply.

 

Since then, we have worked on the design a bit more, (although still a concept) and I would like Liverpool fans tosee it. It is designed by a fan who understands the passion of Anfield, and the English football ground.

 

You can see images at:

 

Ian Ritchie Architects :: News :: 2008

 

The images show an alternative English Anfield stadium concept to give you sense of how the emotional feel of the stadium could be. Our planning and structural ideas are reasonably well worked out, and we will have some more fully developed images in mid-February.

 

A NEW ALTERNATIVE ANFIELD STADIUM

 

It has been designed for free by a Liverpool fan ( since 1965 ) for the fans to have an alternative to consider since the nearly all Americans only want Americans to design their buildings wherever they go in the world. It has been designed to seat 75,000.

 

It would cost less than £300m. The Kop can be all standing (25,000), which would take capacity to 90,000. OR, the stadium costs can be reduced by about £25m if we have 65,000 all seated (to meet FIFA regulations when FIFA World Cup matches are played here) and 75-80,000 when the Kop is all standing.

 

This is allowed for league matches throughout Europe. Only FIFA (World Cup Games) and the FA Premier League (at the moment) insist on all seats anywhere in the world.

 

It has 92 VIP boxes above the second tier, and none in the Kop.

 

There are no ‘tunnel’ entrances / breaks in the lower and middle tiers. They occur only in the top tier and the top area of the Kop, allowing a ‘wall of red sound’ to be imagined.

 

The Kop is very identifiably the Kop.

 

I am keen that the other fans of Liverpool are aware that that an alternative design exists, and can make up their own minds whether they think it a far better new Anfield and Kop is possible than the one the Americans want to build.

 

Personally I find the stadium design very poor. My critique of the latest HKS design is available below.

 

Regrettably, Hicks and Gillett’s expertise is clearly not in design, nor design judgement, nor treating Liverpool FC with respect, nor, it seems in understanding English football.

 

This is an unsolicited proposal, done for the Liverpool fans and the club. Each of us wants to do what he can to save our club from being ripped apart. I am not seeking to usurp any architects currently engaged or involved with the club.

 

If any of the above is of interest, I would be happy to discuss it with you.

 

Liverpool FC simply deserves far, far better.

 

Ian Ritchie

Director of Ian Ritchie Architects Ltd.

Royal Academy of Arts’ Professor of Architecture.

CABE Emeritus Commissioner.

Co-founder of Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR) design engineers, Paris.

 

 

 

 

A CRITIQUE OF THE HKS PROPOSED DESIGN FOR OUR NEW ANFIELD

 

“The Bowl View to Kop; The Bowl View to the North Deck”

 

What is this American language to describe a new football stadium, the Kop and north stand?

 

This American’s design of a football stadium is awful. It has no soul whatsoever and is a total mess inside and out.

 

Externally, there is almost no sense of a stadium – more of an office building, with typical green glass, and some bent metal banana wall “on steroids” attached at one end – the Kop.

 

There is no wow factor, or sense of thrill.

 

It is the worst sort of visually illiterate American architectural stunt-making.

 

If the architects were instructed to try to capture some bygone age when stands were built at different times (as with Anfield and most English clubs) in order to somehow relate to the past then it has resulted in something awful and absurd for the 21st century.

 

It will become an embarrassment to Liverpool FC and undermine our club’s world-wide reputation.

 

From the inside, the huge gaps without seating at the corners lose any sense of enclosure and togetherness. This is an essential character of our present stadium! Allowing views in (to see the undersides of the roofs) from Stanley Park is not only unnecessary, but also a fictional interpretation of some idea that transparency makes architecture somehow more democratic. Claptrap!

 

Separating each side with huge windows does nothing for the atmosphere.

The new Anfield should have stands which create a continuous wall of colour and sound.

This is not achievable when the stands don’t join up visually or physically.

Are the designers unable to understand the geometry needed to achieve it?

 

The new thick edged flat roofs look as if they have been borrowed from a stadium of the 1950’s and stuck on their old design. Are they supposed to reduce the cost and make the stadium cheaper? Well, the latest roof certainly looks cheap.

 

The structure holding up the different roofs is visually uncoordinated – two different types of arches holding up 1950’s roofs! The columns in the corners supporting the roof beams look like alien giant cigars and have no scale relationship to the rest of the design!

And, there is nothing about the roof which blends with the now facetted edge of the pitch and the shape of the lower tier of seating. It also looks like those supporters who will be sitting in the lower tiers will get very wet when it rains – and it does rain a lot in Liverpool.

 

Have the acoustics been studied to keep the world-famous acoustic atmosphere generated by fans – it is not just keeping the Kop voices together, or sound reflections from the roof of the Kop, but managing the air spaces so the sound doesn’t escape and indeed resonates within the stadium! The approach might be to preserve the Anfield roar but surely we should also aim to improve on it! And you can keep all of this sound and still make the PA system work. This is all well known to any good acoustic engineer. The designs don’t suggest that they have.

 

And, they’ve split the Kop with what looks like VIP boxes.

 

This design approach is not untypical of much US commercial architecture, where design elements have little harmony of scale or form, and many elements appear over-sized, and building designs appear as images collaged together without any sense of unity. Is it that American architects bend over backwards to please the ‘tastes’ of clients who have very little design awareness or sensitivity?.

 

Regrettably, Hicks and Gillett’s expertise is clearly not in design, or design judgement, or treating the manager or fans with respect, or understanding English football. Their architects simply don’t understand what they are designing and who for. It has no relationship to Stanley Park.

 

It will be a tragedy for all of us if this design gets built. It will be with us for at least 100 years!

 

The club deserves every support for its physical and social regeneration ambitions, but if the Liverpool FC Board accept this design it is will be one of the saddest days for both club and city.

 

Everyone who has been associated with Liverpool FC for a long time supports the ambition to regenerate this part of Liverpool, to keep the atmosphere of the Anfield stadium, and the irreplaceable value of the Kop. Surely we need a design by designers who understand what a football stadium is, and will be in the future.

 

While everyone who loves the club has their sights set really high, this proposal flies in the face of good design and architecture.

 

The whole design is a messy collage, from inside to out, from ground level to roof, and has, from its brief history with Hicks and Gillett, all the symptoms of becoming more expensive as time goes on.

 

A glorious opportunity wasted if it is built, and a tragedy for club and city especially when success at every level is so very possible.

 

Ian Ritchie

 

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this is close to what I think the best design should be. I've been to see Munich's Allianz Arena and it is an awesome venue, very similar in design to this. Basically the Kop should follow the above design, with the rest of the stadium being 3-tiered. There would be no open corners and the sound would be kept within the stadium. Imagine a European night at Anfield turned up to 11.

[Malarkey]

The Emirates on steroids.

[Lupin]

Me too.

[Alan Sex]

Build RiS's

Städium

 

You know it makes sense.

[Guest Ulysses Everett McGill]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this is close to what I think the best design should be. I've been to see Munich's Allianz Arena and it is an awesome venue, very similar in design to this. Basically the Kop should follow the above design, with the rest of the stadium being 3-tiered. There would be no open corners and the sound would be kept within the stadium. Imagine a European night at Anfield turned up to 11.

 

It's shite

[Skidfingers McGonical]

That ariel view makes it look like a smackheads skag tray full of a needles with an aids infection ready to unleash onto the world.

[Guest Ulysses Everett McGill]

That ariel view makes it look like a smackheads skag tray full of a needles with an aids infection ready to unleash onto the world.

 

 

Looks like that stuff they used in Robocop 2