Allianz Arena – stadium description

The stadium, built between 2002 and 2005, is among the World’s Most modern and at the same time Germany’s third largest football ground.  It cost nearly €340mln, though a big portion of the price went for financing construction works worth alone some €290mln. The idea of Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron was chosen best in an international competition thanks to its original bowl that gave beginning to a whole trend in stadium design.

Most distinctive part of the ground are almost 3,000 ETFE-foil ‘air panels’ that cover facades and roof of the ground. With its immense size exterior cladding is the largest foil construction in the world. Each of the panels, also known as cushions, may be lightened in three colours – blue, red and white. Blue are used mostly for TSV 1860 games, red for Bayern matches and white for other events, though the configurations tend to be mixed. This plays an important role however, because one of this stadium’s challenges was to combine colours of both football clubs without antagonising fans of one another. For this reason the ground is greyish when not used and takes colours for specific events. This solution has also been copied, most known example of which is New Meadowlands in East Rutherford.

Allianz Arena’s history is short, but grows fast. It was here that the 2006 World Cup kicked off with Germany beating Costa Rica 4:2 in the first game. Then came other national team games, Champions League fixtures and finally UEFA’s decision to host Champions League final here in 2012, though the ground’s capacity is short of the 70,000 number desired by football authorities. That is not the case in Bundesliga, when Bayern claims to have one of the World’s highest football attendances with a constant 69,000 in statistics.

How Allianz Arena compares to other Bundesliga stadiums?