Inside Fulham’s Riverside Stand: meet the architects remodeling match day

Of all London’s soccer golf equipment, Fulham FC has maybe probably the most ideally located floor. Situated on the north financial institution of the River Thames, Craven Cottage sits alongside Fulham Palace, the house of the Bishop of London for hundreds of years and with roots relationship again properly over a thousand years. Even the membership itself has an extended historical past with the positioning.

Based in 1879, it moved to the positioning in 1896, with lots of the authentic constructions – together with the Johnny Haynes Stand and the ‘Cottage’ itself – now listed as exemplary items of early sporting infrastructure design.

Nothing stands nonetheless on this planet of soccer, nevertheless. The structure and design agency Populous was tasked with reshaping the ultimate piece of the positioning’s jigsaw, the Riverside Stand. The plans for the overhaul date again to the chairmanship and possession of the disgraced businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, buoyed by his sale of Harrods for £1.5bn in 2010. Al-Fayed bought Fulham in 2013, after placing in adequate funding to raise the membership to the Premier League (in addition to an ill-advised statue of Michael Jackson).

The Riverside redevelopment plans by no means went away, not like Al-Fayed’s popularity. Beneath the possession of the Pakistani-American tycoon Shahid Khan, Fulham nonetheless had the funds and the drive to make the scheme a actuality.

Opened in Could 2025, after an extended and pandemic-spliced building course of, the brand new stand makes an distinctive advantage of its location, in addition to bringing a few of the most high-end hospitality amenities to a London membership.

Wallpaper* was lucky sufficient to expertise a recreation (a tense and riotously goal-filled loss to Manchester Metropolis, 5-4) from the vantage level of the Riverside Stand, in addition to discover the rooms and suites above it.

We subsequently spoke to Declan Sharkey, international director and senior principal at Populous, on the genesis of the scheme and its realisation. ‘The chairman wished to create a world-class vacation spot,’ Sharkey explains, ‘an enormous members’ membership in a tremendous location.’

The brand new stand doesn’t simply enhance sightlines for match-goers. Along with the higher tiers of hospitality, a brand new walkway alongside the Thames frontage runs instantly behind the stand and is open to the general public, besides on match days, when it turns into an important a part of the food and drinks expertise.

In line with Sharkey, the massive architectural gestures of the brand new stand are impressed by the situation. 4 ribbons of glazing are stacked excessive over the Thames path, cantilevered out with outstanding metal helps. Above these is an higher tier of hospitality house, all set beneath a curving, bronze-coloured roof.

‘We’ve flipped the hospitality mannequin on its head, with views out, not in,’ Sharkey admits, including that the mix of glazing, roof and superstructure was partly impressed by the various residential houseboats on the Thames. ‘It’s a layered piece of structure,’ he says, ‘with a mild curve that displays the curve of the river.’

The seating itself is steeply raked and gives wonderful viewing angles. The 33-degree slope is simply lower than the utmost allowed within the UK (35 levels) and the entrance row of seats within the new stand is 3.5m from the sidelines.

It’s a thousand miles from the outdated Johnny Haynes stand on the opposite aspect of the pitch, transformed from standing terraces to seating within the final century but nonetheless with a modest scale that’s at odds with the sport’s evolution into a world phenomenon, watched by and incomes billions.

A few of that prime curler fashion is in proof within the Riverside Stand, the place various completely different bars and eateries (together with the Marker’s Bar, the Originals, the Connoisseur, the Dugout and the Thames Bar Room) serve up the whole lot from cocktails to small plates and full meals.

Populous, which labored with the inside design crew at Stuart Forbes Associates, has turn out to be adept at conjuring up a cinematic but purposeful imaginative and prescient on the grandest of scales.

Fulham is a single stand improvement, not a brand new stadium, and an identical enterprise is underway on the floor of starry, media-friendly Wrexham AFC. For Sharkey, it’s all about growing the ‘provide’, constructing out completely different tiers of entry and amenity to lure the company large spenders to the membership.

Stadiums have all the time been large enterprise, however the scope and scale of what such a construction means to its wider environment has turn out to be more and more necessary. When Sharkey joined Populous practically 20 years in the past, he says, the state of the business was ‘Stadium 1.0’.

‘Ten years in the past, we had been at Stadium 2.0,’ he says, ‘and now we’re at Stadium 3.0, the place we’re bringing the excessive avenue into the stadium, from rooster retailers to micro-breweries.’ In line with Sharkey, landmark tasks just like the Populous-designed Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (opened 2019) actually moved the business on, with its 65 food and drinks shops, in-house bakery and high-end Sky Lounges.

Populous was additionally the architect behind the Co-Op Stay, the multi-functional Manchester enviornment with a capability of 23,500, a popularity for wonderful sound and no fewer than 32 food and drinks venues scattered across the floorplan. These embody some very high-end areas, such because the 100-capacity Bentley Document Room and 200-capacity Hideaway.

Essential to the best way the Co-Op features – similar to Craven Cottage’s Riverside Stand – is its means to supply punters on-the-spot upgrades, tapping into the sense of event of a match or a gig to ramp up spending.

None of this bare salesmanship would work if the core providing wasn’t engaging. At Fulham, Populous has formed a easy, elegant metal construction with a putting bronze roof, alongside Stuart Forbes Associates’ ‘distinctive inside expertise’.

These vary from diner-style purple velvet banquettes to bars festooned with chrome and marble. Ornamental tiles and murals, richly textured partitions and ceilings, elaborate mild fittings and dense indoor planting evoke the texture of a boutique lodge, not the backrooms of an ageing soccer stadium.

‘Each undertaking has this golden triangle of design-cost-revenue,’ says Sharkey, explaining how the design of the Riverside Stand maximised the supply of upper-tier house – dwelling to the Lighthouse Social membership house – and the views over the river. ‘It’s an actual group asset’, he says, pointing to the opening up of the Thames Path, in addition to the occasion areas, eating places and clubhouses which are open on non-match days.

What subsequent for hospitality design? ‘We’re seeing tons extra flexibility [in schemes],’ says Sharkey, ‘with a number of occasions occurring over the day. They should be genuine. These are additionally hyper-connected areas – take a look at the Sphere in Las Vegas.’ Populous’ stacked portfolio contains the brand new billion-euro AS Roma Stadium, as a consequence of open in 2028 – ‘We’re bringing the café tradition of Rome into the stadium,’ says Sharkey.

Extra controversially, there’s additionally the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium within the new Qiddiya Metropolis leisure complicated exterior Riyadh, as a consequence of open in 2029. Perched on the sting of a cliff, the stadium’s exterior is bedecked with screens to create an animated, ever-changing kind.

It is a good distance from the peaceable atmosphere of the brand new Thames-side path on days when soccer isn’t being performed. The one sounds are the distant shouts of a cox and oars dipping into the water as rowing golf equipment hold tempo with the joggers that run up and down this new part of river frontage.

Excessive above them are a set of richly embellished new realms, areas the place soccer is virtually an afterthought. Crucial factor is that attendees really feel they’re being entertained.

Populous.com, @WearePopulous, StuartForbes.com, FulhamFC.com, LighthouseSocial.com