Bath stadium design lands in hot water

摘要

Here is a project that reaches beyond the bounds of architecture, or its small-city location. Apollodorus Architecture's classical Coliseum-style Bath rugby stadium is a counter proposal in the best tradition of counter proposals. It is a dramatically alternative view of a development site that has floored the efforts of local team FCBS and high tech hero Grimshaw. And it has gone wild online with millions of views and over 19,000 likes on one tweet/post. It has made a mark because of its looks: stone arches, flags... Apollodorus Mark Wilson Jones, architect and historian, knows his classicism. And so the marmite conversation ensues. To many people the Coliseum stadium design looks like 'proper' architecture: 'beautiful,' they comment. But the meat of Wilson Jones' analysis of the latest proposal, designed by Kay Elliot, is the way this large building in a historic city centre meets the river and the building next to it, and a critique of a visualisation style that shows glass as transparent when it rarely is, with a roof floating above, as they rarely do. It is about the fundamentals of design and how that is conveyed.