Manchester United will attempt to complete their stunning, new 100,000-capacity stadium – which includes a public plaza twice the size of Trafalgar Square and their own version of Wembley Way – in an ambitious five-year timeframe.
The Premier League giants unveiled plans to deliver ‘the world’s greatest football stadium’ on Tuesday morning in two separate videos, showing how the unique new venue will be placed under a vast ‘umbrella’ and include three giants towers inspired by the Red Devils’ trident.
The first video, narrated by former Manchester United captain Gary Neville, guided fans through the vision, with the ‘umbrella’ design creating a sweeping glass and steel canopy to keep fans dry both inside and outside — in what will become the largest covered space in the world.
A huge wraparound scoreboard also features, along with a three-storey museum and canal-side restaurants as part of a vast fan village in a project Man United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe says will ‘preserve the essence of Old Trafford… while transforming the fan experience only footsteps from our existing home’.
Despite the seismic and ambitious plans, Manchester United hope to complete the new stadium — which is estimated to cost in the region of £2billion — in just five years.
Renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster explained why the reduced timeline has been made possible in a second video posted by the club on Tuesday.
Manchester United will attempt to complete their stunning, new 100,000-capacity stadium, which will become the largest public space in the world, in an ambitious five-year timeframe
The unique venue will be placed under a vast ‘umbrella’ – made up of a sweeping glass and steel canopy – and include three giants towers inspired by the Red Devils’ iconic trident
The new stadium will include a public plaza twice the size of Trafalgar Square and give Manchester United their own version of Wembley Way (above) as fans enter the venue
He shared how stadium constructors and the Old Trafford Regeneration Task Force, chaired by Lord Sebastian Coe, plan to manufacture components off-site and use the city’s existing features to assemble them on-site.
United plan to use the Manchester Ship Canal, a 36-mile-long waterway linking the city to the Irish sea, to transport parts of the stadium to the existing Old Trafford site.
‘Normally a stadium would take 10 years to build. We halved that time, five years,’ Foster said during the video.
‘How do we do that? By prefabrication, by using the network of Manchester Ship Canal, bringing it back to a new life.
‘Shipping in components, 160 of them, Meccano-like. And then we rebuild the Old Trafford station, and that becomes the pivot, the processional way to the stadium, welcoming and at the heart of a new sports-led neighbourhood.
‘It’s walkable, it’s well-served by public transport. It’s endowed by nature. It learns from the past, it creates streets. It’s a mix-use mini-city.’
At Manchester United’s unveiling of the stadium Ratcliffe added: ‘We can build a stadium much more quickly (than the conventional 10-year timeframe).
‘There are yards that build structures and are then shipped to locations around the world. The thing that allows us to do that is the Manchester Ship Canal. That halves the time.’
Manchester United plan to manufacture components off-site and use the city’s existing features both to transport and assemble them on-site, halving the construction timeframe
Red Devils co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe vows to deliver ‘the world’s greatest football stadium’
A three-storey museum and canal-side restaurants will be included within a vast fan village
Opening up on the vision as a whole, Foster said: ‘This has to be one of the most exciting projects in the world today. It starts with the most famous football club in the world, a billion followers globally, so it starts with the fans.
‘It starts with the idea of making something which is so intense, it brings you close to the pitch. Acoustically, it cultivates the roar.
‘As you move away from the stadium, it’s not a fortress surrounded by a sea of cars. It’s open, and it’s contained by an umbrella that harvests solar energy, harvests rainwater – but it’s protective and it encloses arguably the largest public space in the world.
‘It’s welcoming, it’s open, it’s at the very heart of a new neighbourhood. And then, it’s part of the city of Manchester, the fastest growing city in the United Kingdom. A city, again, like no other.
‘It’s a powerhouse, steeped in history. Trafford Park was the industrial heartland of the nation, a heritage that I have a personal connection to. My father was a factory worker at Metropolitan Vickers.
‘And then, the three masts, the Trident, visible from 40 kilometres, 200 metres high. So this becomes a global destination.
‘And what makes a global destination? What makes something so special? It’s teamwork. It’s the best brains, the civic leaders, the owners, the consultants, the engineers, the architects, the fans.
‘The list is so long, it’s a team effort. That is the heart of the success of this project.’
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