Populous

Delve into our interactive “Live Emotion” gallery to explore some of the most iconic venues across sport, live performances and other major global events from the past 40 years. Our unique design history has acted as the backdrop for much bigger stories and moments — those of community, sustainability and passion — for four decades and counting. As we commemorate this milestone, we want to say thank you and celebrate with you, the individuals across the world who fill these venues with the emotion that gives them meaning. Access the gallery: https://lnkd.in/gEnSWQnm

Exciting news from Manchester City Football Club on the latest stage of their Populous-designed stadium development, revealing the configuration of the expanded North Stand. The expanded North Stand will increase the Etihad Stadium’s capacity to more than 60,000, with the stand itself featuring a broad range of seating options, including a large rail-seating area. The expansion is part of the Club’s wider development of an entertainment destination at the Etihad Campus that will herald a new era of fan experience at the stadium. Once complete, the destination will include a stadium roof walk experience and a new City Square fan zone with capacity for 3,000 people.

Populous is delighted that Co-op Live has received an award at the BCSA - British Constructional Steelwork Association Awards 2024. Last week, Populous Principal Bianca Binder and Senior Associate Roberta Liuzzi from the design team, attended the award ceremony in London. A huge congratulations to the project team - Oak View Group, BAM UK & Ireland, Buro Happold and Severfield!

We're thrilled to share that Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, has been named one of the World's Most Beautiful Sports Venues by the Prix Versailles. This award was given to only six sports venues globally for signs of exceptional architecture and design. Gillette Stadium has solidified its position as a regional landmark; a destination in and of itself, regardless of season, time of day or scheduled events. We are honored to see it celebrated on the world's stage. Learn more about the design of the stadium here: https://bit.ly/3XIZRnD

In 2025, the WNBA will welcome the Golden State Valkyries — the first women’s professional basketball team in the Bay Area — and first expansion to the league since 2010. We are proud to have designed two state-of-the-art facilities for the Golden State Valkyries, including a dedicated Locker Room at Chase Center and a Valkyries Practice Facility in Oakland. During their 2025 debut at Chase Center, the Valkyries will share the 18,000+ capacity indoor arena in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. The Populous-designed Valkyries Locker Room will serve as the team’s headquarters on home game days. It encompasses 6,800-square feet of world-class amenities including a training room, player lounge and dining areas, and separate offices for coaches, player development and medical staff purpose-built specifically for the players of the WNBA’s Bay Area franchise. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3zzo3Rc

Populous Associate Principal Ari Lorenzana and AIG Women’s Open Championship Director, Zoe Ridgway of The R&A recently participated in a panel discussion at RAISE, the Global Women's Sport Conference. They shared the inspiring and transformative strategy to enhance the event-day experience at the AIG Women’s Open through the development of a new creative direction and messaging for the Festival Village, which contributed to a 53% increase in attendance from 2021 to 2023 and continued to deliver those numbers in 2024. This project at the Women's Open Championship is just one of the ways in which Populous continues to champion equitable design and creating venues and facilities dedicated to women's sport and helping female athletes perform to maximum potential. Congratulations to the teams involved in bringing this ambitious initiative to life, and thank you to everyone who attended Populous' sessions and took part in the important discussions on the future of women's sport across the two days at RAISE. #RAISE2024

Congratulations to the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions on reaching the 2024 AFL Grand Final! A remarkable achievement. We are proud to have collaborated with both clubs in recent years on the development of their state-of-the-art elite training facilities. The Sydney Swan’s headquarters at Moore Park was a one-of-a-kind opportunity to locate a high-performance training facility within the Royal Hall of Industries, a 110-year-old exhibition hall and Sydney icon. The centre inherently instils club values and culture into an architectural response centred around an indoor field at its heart. The Brisbane Lion’s new home at Brighton Homes Arena celebrates the Club’s rich history and strengthens its ties to the local community and passionate membership base. As Australia’s first dedicated gender equal training facility, it sets an industry benchmark for the development of the professional men’s and women’s game. These facilities have opened new opportunities for each club to enact their community, indigenous reconciliation, and sustainability values. We are excited to watch their success on and off the field, both this weekend and into the future. Best of luck to the Swans and the Lions on the last Saturday in September.

It was great to be back in London again and I was honored to be able to speak at the SportsProAI conference about AI for venue design. It’s very easy to think that GenAI for Architects is about generating nice images very quickly. And while that’s certainly a great usecase there is so much more that the technology can enable us to do. At Populous we been experimenting with genAI t to greatly streamline client and partner-related processes to come to a unified vision more quickly and to keep the quality at a very high level, even as complexity of our work increases. That said, let’s not forget that as impressive as the technology is, it's still a tool. The ultimate goal is to enable deep personal connections that fans need (and want) to have with their home venue. That’s how our work is ultimately judged.

Jonathan Nelson, Populous Global Head of Digital spoke at the SportsPro AI conference at the (Populous-designed) London Stadium yesterday on ways AI can impact the unification of venue design, technology and fan experience. #SPAI

Having worked on many large-scale stadium projects across the globe, Andrea understands the importance of embedding sustainability at the heart of a project. From the concept phase, sustainability-focused design thinking “establishes clear goals and drives the kind of change that leads to significant progress in the field,” he says. A memorable project for him was the renovation of Stade de la Meinau in Strasbourg, France. The design for the stadium’s south stand façade is constructed from upcycled A340 airplane fuselages. This entailed a challenging process to ensure the fuselages were fit for purpose and economically viable, while reducing the carbon footprint of the building. “It has been extremely complex to solve all the technical issues we faced to ensure it was feasible to bring into architecture parts of an airplane that, by their nature, don’t belong to it.” Following an accurate detailing process, the result is an upcycling method with a comparable cost to an off-the-shelf façade system and a significantly reduced embodied carbon footprint for the stadium. For Andrea, working on projects with global impact is incredibly interesting because of the opportunities for collaboration they offer. “I enjoy challenging and diversifying my own vision and approach, as well as others’. The process of challenging your assumptions empowers you to adapt, learn and grow in the best way."   #WorldGreenBuildingWeek #WGBW24 #BuildingTheTransition