You might not like it. You might not be too sure about it. You might love it.
But make no mistake, you can’t ignore it. And it will visually define Birmingham for the rest of the century and potentially help catapult the club that carries the city’s name towards Europe’s elite.
Blues new stadium, The Powerhouse, unveiled at Digbeth Loc. Studios.
It’s bold, it’s brash and it’s the centrepiece of the club’s Sports Quarter development, spread over 135 acres of land in Bordesley, East Birmingham.
The £1.2 billion arena, boasting 12 chimneys to recognise Birmingham’s industrial heritage and its location on the old Birmingham Brick Works, will dominate the skyline and become an iconic feature amid a destination venue.
The influence of Peaky Blinders creator and lifelong Blues fan Steven Knight is writ large in the design that was chosen by the club.
The brief was for something different that becomes renowned and make people the world over instantly go ‘ah, Birmingham City Football Club. Birmingham’.
Heatherwick Studio and MANICA architects, with Knight advising, have delivered. Sure, at first viewing you do wonder. But I think this stadium grows on you.
It is not a boring, soulless bowl, an identikit stadium. Leicester City, Southampton, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Stoke City . . . samey samey. It is unique and captures the attention and imagination.
Why The Powerhouse?
Knight, speaking at the post-unveiling press conference, said: “The structures that are around the stadium were once upon a time structures that were built in order to create a power source, so obviously it was a logical thing.
“But there’s something about a football stadium and a stadium where people perform live music. I think anybody who goes to those places feels a particular sort of power when you’re in there, when you’re with the crowd. You feel that excitement and you feel that enjoyment of an event.
“And that’s what we want. We want this thing to be a theatre of enjoyment. And of the power of collective experience.”
Eliot Postma, of Heatherwick Studio, said: “This whole project, so much was about identity. So often contemporary stadiums feel quite generic, and a bit anonymous, like spaceships that have landed from somewhere into our cites and towns around the world.
“And so this was about trying to find a story of Birmingham but also of this very specific site that did house the brickworks that built the canals and Victorian houses. And so a name that could go alongside that kind of distinctive vision felt appropriate.”
The chimneys?
There will be a bar at the top of one of the chimneys – the highest bar in Birmingham – with views looking across the city.
And as well as supports for the roof, the chimneys provide ventilation shafts and accommodate lifts and staircases.
Postma commented: “From our perspective, we see this as unashamedly future-facing. Yes, absolutely we wanted to ground the building in the site.
“But they aren’t just Victorian chimneys, these are hard-working, innovative pieces of structure that happen to have a material cue to the past, but this is like an incredible piece of engineering.
“Those chimneys are holding up the roof, they are part of a natural ventilation strategy, they are amazing friend entrances, there’s going to be amazing experiences up those chimneys, they’re the cores of the building, there’s stairs for how you move around, there’s lifts inside them . . . they are intrinsic parts of really innovative pieces of engineering. We absolutely see it as the cutting edge of stadium design.”
Knight added: “I think they are unapologetically fun, as well. And fun is the future.
“We want people to look at the stadium and go ‘wow, look at that’ and talk about it and know exactly what city that stadium is in when they see it.
“You see most stadiums, there could be lots of differences. And they’re great. But this is going to be ‘our’ stadium.
“And what I love about Thomas Heatherwick’s stuff, because I think he’s brilliant, is that he loves stuff that kids like. He loves it when a kid looks at something and finds it fun.
“This is fun. I mean it’s functional and it’s practical and it’s cutting edge but it’s also something you look at and go ‘wow’.”
The retractable roof, incidentally, will take 20 minutes to cover the stadium and its solar panels are expected to provide enough energy to power 100 events per annum.
The Powerhouse is not just about style and no substance.
The designers remarked that they had never before had the word ‘intimidate’ as a demand as part of a concept brief.
However state-of-the-art and spick and span it may be, they were told The Powerhouse had to be a place where the opposition would not look forward to coming to.
Recreating the hostile St. Andrew’s atmosphere we have all experienced was important – so the seats at the two supporter ‘walls’ at either end are banked at an angle steeper than any other ground; away fans are to be stuck in the gods; there will be acoustic enhancers in the roof, to ensure the noise is kept in. Seats will be as close to the pitch as regulations allow.
The stadium is not a wide, yawning bowl – it is tight, vertiginous, shades of a coliseum.
Aside from football – including international competitions in the sport – the plan is to host NFL, rugby, boxing and concerts.
Blues reckon they will give demanding artists and concert goers exactly what they want.
Wagner said: “Ultimately what will drive the interest of those that come and visit is the quality of the entertainment that they are able to enjoy when they’re here and I can assure you that the way this stadium and any of the other assets are designed will be to draw the very best acts in the world here.
“I can promise you that the people that we’re working with know exactly what those acts want because they’re the ones who decide where they go.”
With bars, retail, offices and homes also populating the Sports Quarter – as well as a designated Women’s stadium, an indoor arena and training grounds for all Blues teams – it should be a hive of activity 365 days of a year.
Helping to regenerate East Birmingham and address social inequalities is high on Blues and Wagner’s philanthropic agenda.
Around 16,000 jobs are expected to be created as the stadium and Sports Quarter project begins in earnest, and 14,000 permanent jobs on completion.
Wagner said the ‘gross economic value add’ to the locality would be ‘extreme’ and totalling ‘hundreds of millions of pounds a year’.
Speaking to CEO Jeremy Dale after the unveiling as guests mingled in the studios still trying to take in all that they had seen and heard, he hit the nail on the head for me.
He said that it could be the most important day in the club’s 150-year history as well as the most important day in the next 150 years.
Definitely, a watershed. I’ve mentioned this before, but fast forward to 10 -20 years time, this stadium and Sports Quarter development could be a blueprint for clubs everywhere – a 62,000-seat ground, a portfolio of year round, diverse non-football activity bringing in revenue. Constantly and consistently.
In fact, Wagner predicted The Powerhouse and Sports Quarter would generate £750 million-a-year.
“I want to say it’s three quarters of a billion pounds per year, my gut tells me that we’ll do better than that because we keep seeing more interest in what we’re doing,” said Wagner, Blues chairman and Knighthead co-founder and co-CEO.
However, what other clubs – and historically big ones – are able hit upon a 135-acre site, half-a-mile from a major city centre, with a blank canvas to do as they please, knowing the ruling council are in crisis and they have Government backing? I doubt there is anywhere in Europe where might apply.
They’re all stuck at their present locations and are under a ceiling, stymying growth. Blues look to have smashed a glass roof.
No wonder Wagner and Knighthead jumped at this opportunity when it presented itself.
That’s why, off the back of this vivid arena and the Sports Quarter, Blues have a chance to muscle – or maybe that should be ‘powerhouse’ – their way into the highest echelons of the game.
