The Architecture of the Screen

by Graham Cairns

  As with many of the homes of European football’s oldest teams, the reason for the aesthetic anomaly of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium is its age. Although unrecognisable today, its original reinforced concrete structure was built in the late 1940s. However, there is another reason why its aesthetic may be less “camera loving” than the typical modern iconic Olympic stadium of the television age; it has been built for the competitive and combative sport of football. In this regard, a comparison with the stadium used until recently by one of Real Madrid’s most intense European rivals is revealing. Created for the celebration of the 1972 Olympic Games, the Munich Olympic stadium was the home of Bayern Munich Football Club until 2006.

  Designed by Frei Otto and Gunter Benisch, it is seen by many as the culmination of Otto’s lifework with tensile, lightweight structures.38 It is characterised by a number of iconic architectural features which, although celebrated in architectural circles, are totally alien to the football spectacle that would be held there for over thirty years. The most obvious of these characteristics was the introduction of an athletics track around the perimeter of the central field. A completely necessary and totally normal feature of an athletics stadium, the track distanced the public from the field of play and thus produced a spatial effect totally at odds with the smaller, more traditional and celebrated stadia of European football.39

  The stands in which the public sat had an undulating form that mirrored the stadium’s famous roof covering. Designed to follow the roof in this regard, the stands have a low pitch and thus further distanced the public from the football event. In addition, the undulating roof covering of the stadium did not fully enclose the stadium and, as a result, the spectator inside was permitted views of both the countryside and the city in the distance. Another consequence of the decision to not fully enclose the stands included the fact that certain members of the audience were always uncovered. Whilst possibly acceptable for a summer event such as the Olympic Games, this characteristic is rather more inappropriate for a winter sport such as football. Furthermore, this open characteristic reduced the intensity of the noise generated by the competitive atmosphere of a football match by allowing the sound of the fans to dissipate away rather than resonate around the pitch; something that further distanced the psychological effect of the stadium from that created on occasion in Jorge Valdano’s Santiago Bernabéu.

  These characteristics stem from the fact that it was not conceived as an intimidating fortress designed to heighten the visceral effect inside the stadium. On the contrary, it was designed for the Olympics; a “friendly” summer event that required an athletics track, a sports field and a structure that could accommodate the technological requirements of the world’s media broadcasters and that would help turn the live sporting event into an international television spectacular. In this regard, the transparency of the undulating form was seen as essential. It not only created an impressive visual feature for the world’s television cameras to film but, as stipulated by the Games’ first fully colour television broadcasters, it also helped reduce the shadows falling on the track and field events.40 Although today, in the era of digital filming and more advanced stadium lighting, such factors are of less importance, in 1972 they were considered significant.

  In addition, there were requirements for inordinate amounts of technological facilities for members of the conventional press, radio broadcasters and television companies which, in 1972, were already numbered in thousands. As a result, interview rooms, press and commentary boxes, camera gantries, external broadcast lighting facilities, and much more had to be fully integrated into the project. The demands of the media industry on the building’s infrastructure were such that Philip Drew vehemently accused the services engineers and broadcasters associated with their installation of “committing atrocities” against the structure.41 Amongst these atrocities were the structures constructed for lighting, a number of glazed walls to acoustically seal areas and the main observation deck constructed for journalists.

  The most obvious influence of the television broadcasters on the project, however, was seen in its aesthetic; in its inception from its earliest days as an iconic building representative of a progressive Germany. For Otto and Benisch, the project represented an opportunity to develop their lightweight, tensile architecture, and thus forward their aims of a rational, technological architecture of minimal materials and waste. For the IOC and the German Olympic Committee however, it was also an opportunity to “construct an icon”. Although Otto himself defined his work as “the new architecture; the architecture of bold calculation, tenacious boldness and simplicity”,42 its appropriation in this way worried him even at the time. He saw it as a tendency that would “distort architecture into a craze for the huge and the spectacular”.43 In the decades to come, he was proved right, and it may thus be possible to associate the Olympics, the television industry and the money it generates with the birth of the architecture of the spectacle (Fig. 2).

  Figure 2: Munich Olympic Stadium.

  Stadium design, broadcasting and the production of advertising imagery

  In addition to being seen as an icon of modern architecture in its own right, the building very soon became a symbol of the new progressive and technologically advanced West Germany, and formed an integral part of the television coverage of the Games. Its flowing tensile roof forms facilitated the production of evocative camera shots as the camera passed effortlessly along the undulating structure. Resulting in some of the most arresting television imagery of architecture ever seen, these images also presented the world television viewer with stunning background views of the city and the region of Bavaria, in general. It thus became, not only a building and a television image in and of itself, but also became a vehicle for the creation of picturesque images of the region that would be a template copied some twenty years later in Barcelona.

  As mentioned previously, the use of “beauty cameras” in the Barcelona Games of 1992 were intended to facilitate television images of the city that would function as a form of tourist advert. In the case of Barcelona, some of these images were independent of the Olympic stadia themselves. In others, the stadia were fully integrated into the televised tourist images in ways similar to Munich. In this regard, the Montjuïc diving pool is exemplary. The diving pool is situated on the Montjuïc hills overlooking Barcelona and was deliberately orientated towards the city. As a result, each time a camera filmed one of the divers, the background image of the shot was a spectacular view of the city behind. Thus, although the building’s facilities in themselves were not particularly notable from an architectural perspective, they managed to convert each dive into a postcard advert for the city.

  However, the contribution of the Montjuïc diving pool to the televised image was not simply based on its appropriate orientation. One of the cameras filming the events used rectangular openings constructed in one of the building’s walls as a sort of picture frame to the filmic image it shot. By filming the city through this opening, the architecture acted as a compositional device that formed a subframe to the televised image. Although the architect of the Montjuïc diving pool has indicated this was not his intention, the inherent cinematographic characteristics of the building were highlighted by the broadcasters and used to their utmost potential. The Montjuïc pool thus represented an incorporation of the building into the televised image that was far more detailed than anything seen before (Fig. 3).

  Figure 3: Montjuïc diving pool.

  Something similar was seen in the 2004 Athens Games in the filming of the Santiago Calatrava–designed roof structure for the Olympiakó Stádio Spiros Louis. As with the 1972 design of Frei Otto in Munich, described as “representing the effortless grace of a great athlete’s performance”, Calatrava’s curving and sumptuous design seems to evoke the body in motion.44 As with the Munich stadium, its curvilinear form was also perfect for delineating tracking shots which became spectacular images of the building and its surroundings. However, more in tu
ne with Montjuïc, the stadium and its actions were also regularly filmed from very specific points of view so as to use the architecture as a compositional device in the television image. Most notably, this was evident in television images shot from behind the throwing positions of the shot-put, javelin and discus competitors.

  Given the way the stadium roof structure curves to points at both ends of the stadium, these shots positioned the athletes in the foreground in the centre of the image and allowed the curving form of the building’s structure to fall to a point directly behind. The clear blue sky of Greece functioned as the image’s final touch by offsetting the dramatic white structure of the Calatrava stadium. Framing the competitors with the roof structure, the film crews once again identified the formal properties of the architectural design in cinematographic terms. They then used them to create specific filmic images that any film director or photographer would be proud of. Echoing the formal approach of Leni Riefenstahl in 1936, but without its political connotations, these commercial broadcasters used the bodily action of the athlete in conjunction with the architectural qualities of the stadium to produce memorable shots that function as formally sophisticated advertising images.

  Currently, such specific uses of architecture in the creation of picture postcard images only play a minor role in the design of stadia that are conceived in the contemporary media–architecture complex. Nevertheless, these isolated cases signpost an important strand for the future of architecture conceived for the television and its various media derivatives. In this future, the design of sports architecture may not be limited to the design of iconic architectural structures, it may be, indeed must be, based on an understanding of architecture as a televisual phenomenon. That phenomenon is by no means exclusively designed for the actual physical user, but is rather designed for the television camera, the screen and the viewer at home.

  Sports stadia in the tele-digitised age

  What is clearly evident from the discussion thus far is that the involvement of the media, and principally television, in modern sport has turned it into a major multinational industry. That industry now represents a significant contributing factor to the wealth of both independent companies, institutions and, indeed, nations; Michael Real and Robert Mechikoff, for example, estimate that today the sports industry represents 1–2% of GDP in the United States.45 As we have seen, this has had major implications for sport in general, as well as the design of stadia in particular. However, the consequences we have mentioned up until this point are, for some experts in the field, little more than the “tip of the iceberg” of what is to come.46

  One such specialist is the architect of the 2000 Olympic stadium in Sydney, and special advisor to the 2012 London Olympic Committee, Rod Sheard. Sheard has commented on the development of sports stadia from their beginnings as physical architectural structures to their current status as “television stage sets” in a number of books including Sports Architecture (2000), Stadia: A Design and Development Guide (2001) and Stadia: Architecture for the New Sporting Culture (2005). In these works, Sheard highlights four generations of stadia which, he argues, have successively provided more comfort and technological facilities to their physical users on the one hand, and have been designed for the production of ever greater television spectacles on the other. It is an evolution in design that has attempted to ensure that the television spectacle remains “spectacular”, but which also turns the stadium from a traditional venue for a one- to two-hour sporting event into a “leisure destination”, a place where we are happy to pass the entire day.47

  Central to this characteristic is the development of ever more televisual facilities for both spectators in the stadium and for media and television crews broadcasting from them. The stadia that do both these things belong to what Rod Sheard has defined as the fourth-generation stadia; those being built today and projected for the future. In these stadia, the most up-to-date representational technology is not only offered to major broadcasters and their home viewers, but is also offered to the spectators inside the stadium.48 The most obvious example is the incorporation of giant television screens in modern stadia which present the physical spectator at the live event with views, perspectives and replays more traditionally associated with television viewing. Similarly, the television screens found inside the executive boxes today characterise most sports stadia, and offer continuous and simultaneous television coverage to the corporate spectator at the live event. Occasionally filmed and edited by teams of producers and cameramen inside the stadium, rather than those of the main television broadcasters, such advances lead us to inevitably question the nature of spectatorship in the modern stadium.49

  A recent UK stadium that accords perfectly with the demands of the contemporary leisured televised age is Wembley Stadium, designed by Norman Foster and opened in 2006 at a cost of £352 million.50 Home of the England football team and the venue for numerous rock concerts and other entertainment events, it is a building that has to accommodate various technical and structural scenarios. Common to all these scenarios, however, is the television image; concerts are recorded for later sale on DVD, performances are often broadcast live in the United Kingdom, and almost every England game and English football cup final is shown across the world in both its edited and live formats. As a result of its status as a stage set for live and mediated events, Wembley Stadium is fully equipped to accommodate the media. It has a conference room capable of accommodating 180 journalists with direct access to media lounges; spaces in which television, radio and printed press journalists can relax and work; various radio commentary booths that hold between two and ten commentators at a time; and two major press boxes capable of holding approximately four-hundred journalists.51

  Repeating the employment of hi-tech facilities found in more humble stadia as well, these press rooms are all equipped with screens allowing journalists to watch the game on monitors and on the pitch whilst simultaneously filing their reports.52 In addition, it has various facilities for photographers and two specially equipped television studios 60m2 each. The television gantry has a capacity for thirty-eight commentator positions and both its internal and external television compounds are state of the art. When one combines the potential offered by these facilities with developments that have occurred in broadcast technology in recent years, such as high-definition imagery, interactive television, video on demand, surround sound, player-cams, super zoom lens imagery, and more, what broadcasters can offer their home viewers is exceptional53.

  Figure 4: Wembley Stadium on-screen entertainment.

  As a fourth-generation stadium however, Wembley can now offer this type of sophisticated television coverage not only to viewers at home but also to spectators inside the stadium. As is to be expected, its executive boxes are all equipped with television facilities and it has the big screen and small in-house screen technologies. Typical of the modern, technologically equipped sporting-leisure venue, these can all carry highlights, trailers, analysis and information of all kinds in high definition. Potentially complimenting the live event, this mediated stream of information and action is potentially available to all. In short, Wembley is a highly advanced media and television studio in its own right that can give both the viewer at home and the spectator in the stadium a high-quality televisual experience.

  As is to be expected, the design of the 2012 Olympic Stadium in London also reflects this new age of leisure and technology. It too is equipped with all the televisual gadgetry associated with the modern sporting spectacle, like big screens, small in-stadium information screens and executive boxes with simultaneous live television coverage of events. However, at one stage in the design of the stadium, there was a proposal to go much further than this. In his capacity as design team advisor, Rod Sheard proposed that the entire stadium facade be used as a sort of “television wrapping”.54 Using the exterior of the structure for the projection of large-scale moving imagery of athletics and, in particular, the events taking place within t
he stadium, this proposal would have converted the building into a giant 360-degree television screen. It would have taken the relationship between the televisual image and the sporting event in a completely new direction, with the building itself becoming the screen and venue for both the live and the mediated event simultaneously.

  In the event, the Olympic stadium design for 2012 took on a very different direction due to budgetary constraints and the imposition of an environmentally responsible agenda. Of primary concern in this case was a sustainable form of post-Games development. Consequently, the stadium was designed to hold approximately 80,000 spectators during the Games but allowed for the removal of 55,000 of its seats after the event. The theory behind this was to ensure that the building could be easily integrated into its local surroundings and would be more easily used and run by its local community once the games were over55, an idea based on previous Olympic projects such as Sydney, 2000.56 Despite the imposition of other concerns and the limits imposed on expenditure, the stadium still cost in the region of £770 million. It also still combined hi-tech media technology for broadcasters, corporate spectators and the more humble spectators in the stadium who were able to watch replays, slow-motion imagery and innumerable amounts of advertising imagery on the stadium’s large television screens.57

  Both these fourth-generation stadia are not only typical of the highly technological present of sports stadia architecture but they also give indications of what its future may be – an ever increasingly technological and digitised phenomenon and experience. With respect to this generation of stadia, Rod Sheard has argued that the logical development of the giant television screens, or individual screens in executive boxes, is the offer of this same facility to every individual in the stadium. He envisages a scenario in which each seat in the stadium is assigned a screen that is adapted to the personal profile of the user. That screen, which will probably be hand-held, could offer an individualised mixture of entertainment, commentary, news and publicity that will use the technology that today characterises the home cinema set.58