The biggest sporting competition in the world is hosted by Germany this
year the 2006 World Cup. The backdrop of this are the stadiums of
Germany perhaps the highlight being the new Herzhog & De Meuron’s Allianz Arena.
While this is the architectural highlight of the World Cup, the actual
final will take place in Berlin’s Olympic stadium designed by Werner
March for the notorious ’36 Olympic Games. This brings me to one of the
highlights of modern German architectural heritage. Here is the only
country in the world which has seen majour architectural statements
from the main three competing political ideologies in the world in the
20th Century.

Ideologies

For the Fascists line up the Olympic Stadium itself or perhaps something by Albert Speer. For the Communists we should take the Palace of the Republic. For Democracy we could take the new Reichstag by Foster and partners home of the German Parliament. The Palace of the Republic for a communist building (proto fascist in reality), is very reminiscent of Cedric Price’s 1961 Fun Palace project in actual brief and realisation, maybe the closest built example of its type in the world. Perhaps however its associations were too close in the past and it is being knocked down (bbc article). The language of the palace Architecture is actually adaptability and, you could whisper it, openness and by implication democracy, not something really in line with its communist clients.The fascist architecture of Speer and March so daunting in real life are doing much better by comparison however, the Olympic stadium for example gets a face lift for the World Cup and stages the Final. Is this because these buildings associations with their ideologies are safely out the way of living history? Late 20thC Architecture in the Democratic realm is well represented by the Reichstag conversion which is a wonderful fusing of new and old suggesting rebirth and continuity, equally however Potsdammer Platz could be read as the commercial public realms grand mistake.

World Cup

However back to the World Cup where the Allianz stadium may represent a relatively new type of architectural expression one perhaps looking for an ideology. The modern cathedral that is the Allianz stadium can hold 70 thousand peole worshiping at the temple of football at one time, it was built on time and budget, it can take cashless payment and with its hi tec skin can instantly become by changing colour any teams home stadium. Its use of the language of adaptability makes it a pretty cool advancement in stadium architecture.

Modern Games

The Allianz stadium is also the latest most advanced building in the line of modern sporting spectacles, where national politics, ideology , sport and commerce mix with modern media. It was of Course the Berlin Olympics which was the first modern world games which introduced the world to this strange mix and which neatly leads us back full circle. So I’ll be watching the World Cup and like every other football fan this summer all over the world participating, by proxy anyway, at the home of the sporting spectacle.

Note

In keeping with my new resolution to try as much as possible to provide kmz files to all buildings I talk about please see Pointingit which has a post to Herzhog & De Meuron and publishes a kmz file on the stadium.