Wired magazine runs piece on Camp Nou renovation and Espai Barça

FC Barcelona’s bold undertaking to forge a renovated Camp Nou out of the current one as part a Club-wide plan to modernize and revitalize virtually all of its facilities and installations is the subject of a recent article published in Wired magazine,

The article, which also includes a video and was authored in cooperation with Audi, the German automaker and FC Barcelona Premium Partner, details the litany of changes coming to both the stadium and its surroundings as part of the broader Espai Barça project, which will further integrate the Club with its neighborhood in the Les Corts district in Barcelona.

The crown jewel of Espai Barça is the overhaul of Camp Nou which will add some 6,000 seats, bringing the total capacity to around 105,000. In addition, the Club’s basketball arena, known as the Palau Blaugrana, will be replaced by a new, bigger arena. Both buildings will be models of efficiency and environmental sustainability.

“The stadium is 60 years old and we haven’t done almost anything since 1982,” explains Jordi Moix, the commissioner of Espai Barça. “It has a lot of good things, as you can see. And it was much more efficient to refurbish current installation rather than begin from scratch.”

The stadium’s changes will focus on optimization, such as with new underground parking to improve fan access and a steeper lower level inside the stadium to enhance visibility. One of the highlights will be a roof over the seating area to keep fans dry when it rains.

Views both to and from the new Camp Nou will open the area up with the purpose of better integrating it within its urban surroundings and giving fans a well-rounded experience.

“This means that coming to Camp Nou would mean more than just a 90-minute game, which is what it is now,” says Moix. “There will be services that can attract our fans to the stadium one or two hours before and socialize on match day.”

Technology is paramount

On of the architects of the project, Yoshiyuki Uchiyama, emphasizes in the video the importance of technology to understand what the current stadium is like, given that when it was built, some 50 years ago, the design process was very different.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has played an enormous role in the project. “This was an excellent start, but it didn’t help us to know what element was a wall or a column and so a human still had to add those attributes onto our system,” says Uchiyama. Once that was done, he said, BIM allowed the architects “to construct the building on a computer before beginning the renovation.”