Dragão Stadium

The Dragão Stadium (F.C.Porto) is a facility that is of major urban importance to the redesign of the Antas area.
With seating for 50,000 spectators, it is a core element and a unit of reference for the city of Porto in sporting, leisure, recreational and commercial terms.
The Dragão Stadium is part of a new generation of football stadiums. Besides being a space in which to play the game itself, it is a large multipurpose infrastructure with a clinic, health centre, bingo hall, offices, megastore, club museum and shop, restaurant, café, indoor sports, and polyvalent foyers for conferences, congresses, parties, meetings and so on. It is this model – as opposed to a simple football stadium – which makes the infrastructure viable from a financial point of view.
In order to reduce the impact its scale has on the surrounding buildings, the Stadium’s layout takes advantage of the particular conditions offered by the sloping terrain.
The alameda, the main pedestrian walks, the metro station, the bus stops and the car park exits converge on a large round platform, which serves as the basis on which the stadium is built.
The idea of digging the lower tiers of seating and the pitch down into the surface of this platform made it possible to approximately halve the visible mass of the Stadium. This works like a plinth set into the terrain, at an elevation which is halfway between the top of the alameda and the lower area that runs down to the VCI (the Porto Inner Ring Road).
The upper tiers of seats, which border the pitch to both east and west, are cut off from the square and were designed like isolated buildings. Opening up the top of the northern and southern points of the Stadium, at the square level, allows views across the city, and also helps to attenuate the structure’s urban impact.