Customer Reviews

The Stadium: Architecture of Mass Sport

5 star:		(1)
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This title is the definitive exploration of stadium design philosophy in the new century. Enlightening interviews with the top minds in the field, beautiful full-colour photographs of the world's great stadia and photos of project design proposals. I re-emphasise the photos: this is an excellent coffee-table paperback for the avid or casual fan. My one very minute criticism is that there a couple of annoying photo-essay sections which have more to do with sports culture than with philostadiology. But on the whole, in my intensive search over the years for a top-quality book on world stadia, this is the finest publication, and I recommend it as TOP PRIORITY for all those like me who are fascinated by stadiums, be they old, gone, new, or neverwere.

This book was published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Netherlands Architecture Institute. The content is mainly on the place of stadia in society and stays away from the science/engineering aspects of design.

What I liked about this book was its unique approach. In addition to short write-ups on about 40 international stadia with facts, figures and bold color photos, there are also longer articles on stadium riots and crowd control, stadium design as a method of political influence, etc. My favorite parts were the interviews with leading sports architecture firms, where execs give their opinions on the future of sport and society in general and stadium design in particular.

However, it is a European publication, so most of the content is centered around soccer venues...not necessarily a bad thing, just not very interesting to me. About 6 or 7 American venues are profiled, and the publisher's lack of familiarity with American sports was evident by all the factual and spelling errors regarding them. Still, this is a good coffee table book with brief, interesting articles and good photos, great for short sittings.

I rerally do not think that this book is great