Room with a view

Tammela Stadium in Tampere

Situation

Tammela Stadium is situated in the midst of resi­den­tial buil­dings and is home to the foot­ball club Ilves in the Finnish town of Tampere. It was built in 1931, offers 5,000 seats on two diffe­rent stands and is to be replaced by a new buil­ding.

New Tammela Stadium aims to unify the city struc­ture in Tammela by rein­tro­du­cing tradi­tional closed block struc­ture to an area that has become frag­mented and inco­herent. There is a green “cour­tyard” surrounded by a conti­nuous low buil­ding mass housing small shops like in historic city blocks that have mostly been torn down. In the East, the block boar­ders Kaleva Boule­vard in the same line with an old school buil­ding North of the stadium. On the Western side the block is retracted to form a small entrance square for the buil­ding and to leave enough space for the exis­ting housing. This is how the exis­ting row of trees can be preserved. This is important as there are only few green spaces in the area and every tree counts.

Buildings from all four sides

Surroun­ding the pitch with buil­dings from all four sides makes the block effi­cient and finan­ci­ally sustainable without making the stadium too massive in valuable historic setting. The City of Tampere aims to finance the public stadium project by selling the buil­ding right for the housing on top of the stadium. As the audi­ence surrounds players from all four sides the bowl like space is spati­ally very intense. The heights of the crown like block’s tips have been carefully adapted to surroun­ding buil­dings. By pushing down the middle parts of the sides, the neigh­bors’ long views have been preserved and the school cour­tyard still gets direct sunlight. The home team of Tampere is called Ilves meaning lynx. You can see refe­rences to lynx’s ear tufts or the flight path of a foot­ball in the form of the block.

Architect

avanto archi­tects ltd
kale­van­katu 31 a
3 fi — 00100 helsinki
finland

Client

City of Tampere

Address

Kalevan puistotie 21
33500 Tampere
Finland

Aerial view

Thank you, Google!

Enter from all four corners

You may enter the stadium from all four corners. It is easy to find the entrances that are situated under the vaulted ceiling of buil­ding masses at the ends of the field. As required by UEFA, it is possible to arrange a sepa­rate entrance and stand for a visitor team. The most public func­tions, the restau­rant and the gym, have been placed in the block corners so that they are easy to reach. The idea is to open the buil­ding for the local resi­dents as well. All spaces are flexible and can be used by diffe­rent users during diffe­rent times of the day so that the use ratio of spaces can be raised. The hybrid block housing various func­tions is active 24/7.

The field is oriented North-South and the main stand with TV cameras is on the West side, accor­ding to UEFA instruc­tions. As the bridge like buil­dings on rein­forced concrete arcs on the short ends need no columns, even the end stands have unob­s­tructed views to the field. The stands can tempo­r­a­rily be extended to fill the highest UEFA cate­gory 4.

Living in a stadium

As the buil­ding volume is rela­tively thick, many diffe­rent types of housing can be built. The proposed student flats coun­ter­ba­lance the demo­gra­phic struc­ture of the area with mostly elderly people. Special emphases was put to the social sustaina­bi­lity of the project. The sense of commu­nity is created by intro­du­cing various common spaces like green conser­va­to­ries and saunas with exten­sive roof terraces. The gene­rous side-corridor provides extra space for storing a bicycle, urban gardening or even watching a match inside the stadium with your neigh­bors. The upper­most floor with curved roof houses loft apart­ments with varying ceiling height.

Ground plans

Elevations + Sections

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