With several high-profile projects, including the planned Etihad Stadium expansion and the $1 billion Eleven Park in Indianapolis, on its horizon, Populous senior principal Silvia Prandelli sat down with The Athletic recently to detail the firm’s approach to stadium design in an era that is more welcoming to numerous groups — women, families, wheelchair users, and more — left out by traditional approaches to the typology.

Prandelli was the architect for both the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the 2012 London Olympic Stadium projects. She spoke about several concepts the firm is applying to their designs while navigating a host of regulations from national governments and European professional soccer’s governing body UEFA. The solutions mentioned include increased pram storage and gender-neutral bathrooms together among other interventions considered foreign to the sport sector before the last decade.

“We’re using our personal experience to try and change the way we design,” she explains.

Among the particular challenges is the task of designing spaces for women’s clubs, which the article reminds us were banned until 1971. Removable field surfaces, capacity reductions, and the needs of players are all at the forefront of their new strategy, and the firm says they have adopted a “one-team” ethos in order to create stadiums they want to become “catalysts of inclusion" using these methods. 

Forthcoming projects such as the Brisbane Lions' 9,000-seat stadium and training facility and the new combined home of Inter & AC Milan will both serve as litmus tests for their efficacy. “It’s all about flexibility,” Prandelli says. “[We] start thinking about a venue that can morph into a different animal every time you have a different game.”

Her full interview with The Athletic can be found here.