Sports stadium design: an interview with Rod Sheard



Sheard is the architect of some of the world’s premier sports stadiums (such as Dublin’s Croke Park, above). This article originally appeared in the January issue of UK Esquire magazine.

If watching sport is the nearest many of us get to organised religion, then it’s no surprise that the arenas we frequent feel as sacred as the cathedrals our ancestors once worshipped in. What makes them worthy of genuflection is that they are places not just of observation, but also of participation, where we, the crowd, are as much a part of the spectacle as the supermen on the turf. Theatre may be the highest of high culture, but there is no equivalent of the ‘12th man’ at the Royal Opera House.

Rod Sheard understands better than most the relationship a fan has with the venue where he follows his chosen sport. The “Senior Principal” of architects HOK Sport (the go-to company for stadium design) has overseen projects as diverse as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, the new Wembley, Hong Kong’s Happy Valley racecourse, and the O2 Arena, not to mention the contentious 2012 Olympic arena currently rising out of the Lea Valley in east London.

Sheard appreciates that working on a stadium is very different to undertaking a residential or office project. “There is something that gets under your skin about sports buildings,” he reflects, relaxing in the firm’s London headquarters, a placid environment lined with the uniforms of myriad sports teams. “If you’ve got that it helps. These are not boring buildings. You can do office projects all over the world, but the level of interest you get from them is limited, whereas with stadia you can go back to them, live in them month in and month out. Ten years into the future you can still remember the times you’ve spent in them.”

Born in Brisbane in 1951, Sheard qualified as an architect in Australia before coming to the UK to work for LOBB Sport Architecture in the late ’70s. After plying his trade for the firm for several years, he became a partner in 1981, and was made chairman in 1993. In 1998 LOBB merged with HOK Sport to become the world’s leading designer of stadia. Today, Sheard runs the London office, a role that allows him to get involved with some of the UK’s most hallowed grounds, as well as plenty more abroad. “If you’re the head of a big firm that does all sorts of stuff,” he reasons, “you’re spread so thinly you can’t be involved in all the jobs. We just do one sort of building – sports and entertainment. Our clients expect a level of personal service, more than you’d expect from a normal architect. But I don’t actually do the door details any more, I have people who can do that.”

The practice currently has a staff count of 530, spread over six international cities to ensure it remains online around the clock. There’s no overall CEO of HOK Sport, rather a board of 10 ‘managers’ who run the company between them. Though this may sound a tad Leninist, in truth it’s a logical blueprint for practical leadership. With an experienced director overseeing each of the practice’s global outposts, important decisions can be made quickly, and, crucially, with the benefit of local expertise.

Sheard believes the key to fulfilling each premises he takes on is to understand the sport that will be played in it. “You have to have different types of stadia for different sports. Pick two extremes like tennis and rugby union. One’s about an individual against an individual, it’s about sheer speed. The practicalities define the speed of the ball and define the stadium. You can’t put 80,000 people around a tennis court; you wouldn’t be able to see the ball. On the other hand, if you put 15,000 people around a rugby pitch there’d be no atmosphere.”



Yet even arenas for the same sport can end up being radically different. He cites his current project at the Centre Court for the All England Tennis Club (above) as an example. “Wimbledon is about the intensity of grass, you almost want to be able to smell that grass. It has that post-box view, the roof comes down very low, you have no peripheral vision, and it’s all about that patch of green. Whereas Roland-Garros or Flushing Meadows is much more expansive, more out in the open.”

Of course, each of Sheard’s arenas is unique, but whether it’s the Suncorp rugby ground in his home city of Brisbane (below) or Benfica’s new Estadia da Luz in Lisbon, a common theme emerges: the site as a catalyst for development. “Cities all around the world are looking at places where they can put these buildings. We put the Colonial Stadium in Melbourne’s docklands and the area just took off. They’re seen as ‘good neighbour’ buildings that people want in their cities. Even a fairly average stadium will bring in a million people a year – Wembley brings in three million. I think we’ll see them develop further, more mixed use, more vitality, more seven-days-a-week use.”



As with so many business plans, the location can be as important as what goes on it. Drive toward Horwich on the M61 in Lancashire and you’ll see a basket-weave of white steel – a trait of Sheard’s designs – nestling in the valley below. This is Bolton Wanderers’ Reebok Stadium (below). Built in 1997, it’s an example of how even a rural environment can be enhanced through the introduction of a well thought-out facility. And this philosophy of working with the environment is what’s guiding HOK Sport’s work on London’s new 2012 centrepiece.



“The idea Seb Coe and his team had was that London doesn’t need an 80,000 seat stadium after the Olympics,” he explains. “Normally, the stadium stays after an Olympics and a sport is found for it. He was brave enough to say that this wasn’t a model we should do here. Rather than change the sport, change the building. We did have a need for an athletics stadium, but that can’t justify more than 25,000 spectators. After the Olympics we’ll take away 55,000 seats.”

Sheard believes that the whole philosophy of stadium design, particularly for one-off events like the Olympics or World Cup, is radically changing. “We see cities like Chicago – which is bidding for the 2016 Olympics. It has looked at London and said ‘let’s take it further’. They can do their venues as temporary structures. Build them in a park in the city centre and take them away afterwards, meaning they don’t have to find 300 acres at the edge of town. Why should a venue be more important than the event? If the event itself is special, everything else falls into place. Minimal impact, touch the earth softly, use as little resources as possible and move on, but do the most spectacular show possible.”

While Sheard may be an Australian, it is the national sport of this country that has provided him with the chance to best flex his creative muscles. As football boomed after the 1990 World Cup, he was perfectly placed to capitalise on the need for safe, well-designed buildings in which the paying customer would be treated like a human being, rather than a caged animal. His revolutionary McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield, the first sports ground to win the RIBA ‘Building of the Year’ award, was built as a direct result of the new philosophy that followed the Hillsborough disaster.

One accusation that the new breed of stadium has had directed against it is that many of the grounds are interchangeable – ‘soulless bowls’ somehow detached from the community the team represents. Sheard is aware of this, and admits it can be a difficult task to imprint the spirit of a club onto a new arena. “A typical Premier League club needs a 50-60,000 capacity, but after that, what sets them apart? It’s about getting inside the psyche of the club, trying to find what’s special to them and reflecting that in a building. When we did the Emirates for Arsenal [below], it helped us a great deal that we’d worked at Highbury before. The Emirates was never about an ego statement, Arsenal may be high-achievers but they are quietly spoken. The ground reflects that.”



Sheard’s enthusiasm for his projects is obvious. Touring HOK Sport’s sleek offices with its Le Corbusier sofas, there’s a perceptible buzz, with people crowded in front of computer screens or hunched around models scrutinizing every last detail. He points to various corners along the way, explaining that “This is the Landsdowne Road project” or that we should “Meet the team doing the roof at Wimbledon”.

Almost immediately you get the impression that he is not into micro-management, and obviously believes in his staff enough to let them get on with it. He prefers instead to be on hand when the occasion demands, and – as long as he knows that things are progressing – is content to let them work things out.

But it’s not just in the office that this feeling permeates. It’s the same on site too. “The trade guys who build these places are just fantastic,” he reflects. “They work a bit harder because of what they are. You might find ‘Tottenham rule’ written on the odd brick at the Emirates, but it’s all tongue in cheek. In the end they believe in the sport, so they do their best. How often do you build a football ground? There’s a feeling of common purpose with a stadium.”

As laid-back and affable as he is, Sheard is also very aware of his responsibilities. It’s for this reason that – along with the other nine principals - he’s helped lead a management buyout from the parent company, that will soon see the sports division go it alone. “When we go in to a client we’re expected to field a team of guys who know what they’re doing – ‘this one’s done five stadiums, he’s done four’. Therefore the loyalty and commitment of our employees is more acute than any other sort of firm. We have to be able to attract and keep the best people.”

“The only way to do that is to give them some level of ownership and we could never have achieved that if we’d stayed part of HOK. By coming out of HOK we’ll pay good wages – and a bonus. In this day and age it’s important that the guys who do the work and make us successful should get rewards in ownership.”

And what of the current global outlook? Isn’t it a bit risky to embark on this sort of action? He thinks not. “Sport is one of those things, even with the economic doom and gloom, that’s insulated from it, more so than say, housing. We don’t have to go through boom and bust cycles, we can plan for the future.” And because stadium design is something that anyone with an interest in sport feels strongly about, it’s a future we'll all be watching with interest. No doubt from a stand he has designed.

Comments