ARCHITECT behind Liverpool FC’s new stadium last night revealed how he instantly realised the “spiritual experience” of the club’s famous Kop end when he visited Anfield. Bryan Trubey, principal designer at Dallas-based architects HKS, was brought to Liverpool to watch the club’s Champion’s League match against Barcelona in March. “It’s hard to say what you are thinking (when you sit in the Kop),” he said. “I was trying to absorb as much of the passion as I could. “I noticed this really incredible thing that was the songs that are sung. This is a spiritual experience for the fans. “That’s the one thing that we got an acute sense of from the beginning. We realised what we needed to do.” Since that night, Mr Trubey has overseen a mammoth cross-Atlantic effort to come up with the spectacular plans for a £300m new stadium, lodged with Liverpool City Council on Wednesday. The Daily Post today publishes exclusive images of how the new 60,000 seater facility, planned to be built over the next three years at Stanley Park, will look. The design, which will cost £300m, is expected to attract a naming rights sponsorship deal worth £100m. It includes a massive steep sided single tier Kop end, which with 18,000 seats will be half as big again as the existing Kop. And the stadium has the capacity to expand up to 76,000 seats, making it one of the country’s biggest Premiership stadiums, if planning permission is granted. HKS is the world’s ninth largest firm of architects, and had a team of between 50 and 60 designers working on the plans spread between London and the USA. Even though the firm are seasoned in handling large projects worth in excess of a billion dollars, they jumped at the chance to tackle the Liverpool scheme. “This one is a very big project for us. We focus on sports and entertainment facilities, it’s really not the size that makes it, it’s that Liverpool is one of the most valuable sport franchises in the world. “The Kop is one of the primary drivers for the design of the building. “It is one of the single most unique things in sport. It has a lot of meaning and tradition that we wanted to make a big part of the stadium.” He said the new stadium was designed to be a uniquely recognisable building, a tourist destination in its own right. “We created the south part of the building to really be a destination environment. He said a number of things were being worked on to “make it a place for fans even on non-game days having a place that is interior to the stadium”. This would include a hall of fame and memorabilia store. Mr Trubey said more details about the plans would be revealed in time, but that the glass corners that allowed views into the ground would not be filled in to make way for the potential additional 16,000 seats. When asked about the large expanse of glass used in the design, he said: “What we are doing there is trying to create a more transparent building so that you can see all the way into the building.” “It’s not often that you get an opportunity to put a facility like this in a listed park. “It’s hard to look at a site like this and not just see advantages. “Our challenge was to do a project that can do an excellent job being part of the park. “It’s easy to put a stadium in the park, it’s harder to make it part of the park. “For us the site was phenomenal, even the grade of the park is a phenomenal gift to the stadium project.” The fact that the Kop had been so central to the designs had meant that the acoustics were also an integral part of the planning. “We have spent quite a lot of time working on the acoustics. That’s a huge part of a sporting event. “That was one of the reasons for the Kop form. He said the physical form of the building would project acoustically to the rest of the venue. “That was very interesting from an architectural point of view. “The Kop drives the event. I have been to sporting venues all over the world. It’s one of the things I get to do because of what I do for a living, and the Kop is totally unique.” So with all that in mind, did Mr Trubey feel a burden on his shoulders? “I don’t see it as a burden, responsibility is maybe a good word,” he said. “That’s the cool thing about our job, it makes you passionately attached when you receive something this important.”
