“We are again before a dilemma”

The architect Antonio Cruz, De Cruz and Ortiz Architects, stunned in a latest interview on the YouTube channel of structure in dialogue by revealing that the Metropolitan isn’t but completed.

As defined, Atlético de Madrid has commissioned them to switch the stadium wrapping to present it a renewed look.

The problem, he confessed, locations them at a crucial level: “We’re once more earlier than a dilemma, as a result of the membership considers that the concrete, the unique materials, isn’t a noble materials.”

Cruz recalled that the present style among the many nice European stadiums is to cowl the constructions with gentle supplies and incorporate lighting programs able to remodeling the outer picture.

A path wherein Actual Madrid has already embarked with Santiago Bernabéu, whose new facade of metallic lames and Led Luz has marked a pattern.

For the Metropolitan, the change will imply a brand new aesthetic leap that may alter the imaginative and prescient of an initially conceived enclosure in the important thing of sobriety and concrete.

Along with the brand new luminous “go well with”, the architect stated that it’s engaged on acoustic changes to enhance the output of the corners, one other of the facets that also generate technical debate.

It’s not the primary time that the rojiblanco coliseum follows the steps of the Bernabéu. This summer season carried out a brand new 360 videomarcador on the ceiling, much like the one which the stadium of its everlasting rival presides with an imposing presence.

In fixed mutation

The Metropolitan is, in Cruz’s phrases, a dwelling venture that already crosses its third main transformation part.

The primary was the development of the comb, opened in 1994 as an athletics stadium with capability for 20,000 spectators.

The second got here with the switch of the enclosure to Atlético de Madrid and the formidable reform between 2011 and 2017, which made it a contemporary soccer stadium with capability higher than 70,000 seats.

Now the third stage is ready, which seeks to lift the id of the stadium internationally.

The target is to create a dynamic wrapping, able to projecting photos and colours on its facade, one thing that might align it with the spectacularity of the Bernabéu or different iconic phases such because the Allianz Area in Munich.

Of icon Olympism

The Metropolitan route is marked by its capacity for reinvention. What was born as a project linked to the failed Olympic candidates in Madrid in 2012, 2016 and 2020, found a new purpose thanks to Atlético de Madrid.

With an investment of more than 310 million euros, the rojiblanco club managed to transform the comb into a reference enclosure.

The cover, designed with avant -garde engineering, and its LED lighting system, with the capacity to project 16 million colors, placed the Metropolitan as a reference in innovation at the time of its inauguration in September 2017.

In just a few years, the stadium has become the scene of great sporting and cultural events.

They highlight the Champions League final 2019 between Liverpool and Tottenham, which will house in 2027, the world record for assistance to a women’s football match in 2019 with 60,739 spectators or first level concerts such as Rolling Stones in 2022.

The hard competition

With the reform of the wrapping, Atlético de Madrid seeks that the Metropolitan not stay behind in the stadium modernization career.

The new Bernabéu has raised the bar with its interactive facade and its retractable roof, which presses other great clubs to update its enclosures.

The Metropolitan, renamed in 2024 as Riyadh Air Metropolitano for sponsorship reasons, is thus preparing for a future where the viewer’s visual and technological experience will be as important as what happens on the grass.

As Cruz summarized in the interview, the history of the Metropolitan can be divided into three different projects, but connected by the same vision.

“It is a project that will have accompanied us for almost 40 years, constantly modifying,” he explains.

A stadium that never stops reinventing itself and now faces a new aesthetic dilemma that will mark its next stage.