News / Bristol Arena
This is what Bristol Arena will look like
The team behind London’s Millennium Dome and Olympic Stadium will design the new £90m Bristol Arena.
Populous‘ proposal was praised for “its unique innovative concept”. The international practice teamed up with Bath-based architecture firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios for the winning design.
The elliptical shape will have no traditional front or back, instead looking the same from Totterdown as from Temple Meads.
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It will have easy access from Bath Road, with a masonry plinth base and translucent digital screens scrolling around the roof.
Mayor George Ferguson said: “The Populous team has presented an innovative design for a horseshoe shaped arena that will allow us real flexibility for programming, for now and into the future, offering both performers and audiences an outstanding acoustic and visual experience.”
The arena will allow for smaller capacity theatre-style events and can convert to larger configurations for sporting events, major conventions or exhibitions.
It’s not just the arena itself either. The grand hope is that the area around the arena also becomes somewhere people visit, whether they have a ticket to a show or not.
Like London’s Somerset House overlooking the River Thames, this area could host outdoor events such as an ice rink in the winter or outdoor theatre productions.
Nicholas Reynolds from Populous said the development will have a lasting impact: “We believe Bristol Arena will be the catalyst for the creation of a vibrant new quarter in the city.
“The design is flexible enough to cater for a wide variety of events and creates a range of spaces inside and out of the venue itself, for people to come together right throughout the year. Our design for Bristol Arena is unique.”
Rob Hall from The Architecture Centre, at which a scale model of the arena will soon be on display, was full of praise for the winning arena design.
He said: “I’m very pleased. I think that the design is fantastic. This building will be a place to go to see the city. I think that the access from Bath Road is really important. It makes the route through the site part of the story and links very well to the rest of Bristol.”
The detailed design will be submitted for planning approval in the summer. Building work remains on track to begin in spring 2016, with the arena due to open by the end of 2017, with Massive Attack top of the mayor’s wish list to play the opening night.
Read more about the proposed floating walkway to link Temple Quay to Arena Island.