The new Wembley stadium: Jonathan Glanceyis blown away by what he describes as a Colosseum for today, the £798m new Wembley Stadium
This year's FA Cup final will take place at the world's most ambitious, expensive and possibly finest stadium. The crowd will chant its name in time-honoured fashion: "Wem-ber-ley!" - three roaring syllables evoking the boisterous spirit of Britain's national football ground, and the Anglo-Saxon settlement from which it rises.
And, how it rises: a vast, saucer-shaped, 90,000-seat arena, twice the size and four times as high as the old Wembley, and crowned (although principal architect, Norman Foster, describes this as a "tiara") with an eye-boggling steel arch, so high the London Eye could be bowled through it with room to spare, and so substantial that a Eurostar train might just run up, through and down its great length. The new Wembley stadium is twice the size of the Stade de France.
The incoming crowd might be surprised to learn there is a historical precedent to their chant. When this settlement in northwest London was first recorded, in around 825AD, its name was Wembalea. When did it become polite, clipped, two-syllable Wembley? Perhaps when this was the home of Wembley Park, an 18th-century pile with landscaped gardens laid out, from 1793, by Humphrey Repton.
The Wem-ber-ley of popular culture, though, was shaped from the late 1880s when this neo-classical demesne was snapped up by Sir Edward Watkin, the chairman of the Metropolitan Railway. Here, at the centre of what we would call a "theme park" today, Sir Edward set out to build a bigger and better version of the Eiffel tower, designed by British architects and engineers.
His tower never reached further, however, than its first stage - 47m - and "Watkin's Folly" was demolished in 1907 after a decade of neglect. Nor did the Metropolitan magnate ever manage to build his dream railway from Manchester to Paris via Wembley Park, the City and a Channel tunnel.
Things, though, have a way of working out. Watkin's Wembley leisure park became home to both the hugely successful British Empire Exhibition of 1924-5 (more than 27 million visitors) and the first Wembley Stadium, designed by brilliant young structural engineer Owen Williams (1890-1969) with architects John Simpson and Maxwell Ayerton. Completed in just 300 days for £750,000, the stadium was a bravura achievement, although after a long, hard life, it was way past its sell-by date as the end of the 20th century approached.
The new stadium has been, to put it mildly, a bit of a struggle to complete, and far more expensive than had been projected. When the Australian contractor Multiplex bid for the job in 2000, the total construction cost was put at £326.5 million; by the time the bid had been signed, it had risen to £445 million. The stadium was to have opened in 2003, but as work only began in September 2002, this was clearly impossible. The next completion date was to have been in time for the May 2006 FA Cup final, by which time the price of the stadium had risen to £757 million. A year later, and ready for the 2007 FA Cup final, the final figure is £798 million.
And yet, when the first crowds come here, to football matches, to rock concerts, and to the events planned for the 2012 Olympics, they are unlikely to think much about how long the stadium took to build or how much it has cost. The final bill is no more than that of the Millennium Experience, that dim, furtively managed, aggressively spun load of codswallop.
What they will see, and experience is a swooping, smooth concrete arena wrapped around with five levels of atriums, walkways, cafes, bars, shops and restaurants.
These wide and lofty interiors feel more like some stupendous airport - Foster's Chep Lak Kok at Hong Kong, perhaps - than the inside of a sports stadium. Although subdued in terms of colour, corridors, walkways, escalator shafts and restaurants are fitted out and finished to a high standard. Colour, by the way, has been deliberately spurned; the idea here is for the events and crowds themselves to add all the light, life and colour needed to bring this stately, steely-grey building to hugely animated life.
Inside and outside, walls and ceilings have been designed so banners, flags and pennants can hang from them. By night, the stadium will light up - a sporting coat of many colours - while the great arch, visible from many miles, will shine above all. Actually, it will glow more than shine: there has been much concern about light and sound pollution at Wembley. The stadium itself is designed to swallow its own roar during matches, while floodlights and other lighting have been designed to keep what stars can be seen above London shining.
To get to the arena - which will be much easier than it used to be now that Wembley Park Underground station has been completely, and generously, rebuilt - ticket-holders will pass through a great wrap of places to meet, eat and greet. And drink.
Infamously, the old Wembley had fewer than 400 lavatories; the new Wembley, although decidedly warmer and thus kinder to the bladder, sports no fewer than 2,618. A world record. They are decently designed, too - as least as good as you'd expect to find in a well-managed airport.
Throughout, the stadium exudes a robust confidence and easy grandeur. The arena itself is truly breathtaking. A vast undulating wave of sculpted concrete, set about with 90,000 red plastic seats, each with plenty of leg room and uninterrupted views, it shelters beneath a gigantic yet unobtrusive roof, all 11 acres and 7,000 tonnes of it supported by Foster's 133-metre high, 315-metre long "tiara" of steel. If rain is predicted before an event, the roof, in three sections, can be closed over the banks of seats, leaving just the lovingly tended grass pitch exposed.
Despite its size, the arena feels as intimate as any 90,000-seater that has to double up as a venue for rock concerts and athletics events could. The sheer scale of the place, however, can be judged when you discover that players will need to mount 107 steps from the pitch to the Royal Box to receive cups and plaudits; at the old stadium, there were 39.
To keep profits up and the price of popular tickets down, much of the gleaming new architecture is inevitably given over to VIP boxes, venues to rent and the culture of corporate hospitality. So two of the five floors, or rings, of accommodation around the arena are given over to executive-style boxes, each boasting kitchen, bar, TV screen, yet more lavatories and wide seats outside in the arena itself.
The whole point of the "tiara" is to ensure that Wembley is instantly recognised, not just from the skyline of central London, but on TV and computer screens worldwide. It is truly a Colosseum for today.
Has it been worth the wait, and the expense? I think so. The ticket-holding public will be treated well by this building, and although it might be hard to fall in love with such a colossus, the new stadium will surely come to be seen as a worthy successor to its twin-domed predecessor.
Guardian Service
SEATING: 90,000 red plastic seats, each with plenty of leg room and uninterrupted views.
ROOF: A gigantic yet unobtrusive roof, all 11 acres and 7,000 tonnes of it supported by Foster's 133-metre high, 315-metre long "tiara" of steel.
LAVATORIES: The new Wembley sports 2,618 toilets. A world record. The old stadium had fewer than 400 lavatories.
STEPS: Players will need to mount 107 steps from the pitch to the Royal Box to receive cups and plaudits; at the old stadium there were 39.
