Continuing our Future Stadium series, we take a look at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, where Populous aimed to innovate the stadium typology with a multifunctional design that prioritised the fan experience.

The 62,850-seat Tottenham Hotspur Stadium opened in 2019 as the home of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, built on the site of the team's former stadium, White Hart Lane. Covering an area of 43,000 square metres, it is almost double the size of its predecessor.

As well as hosting the north London football team and its fans, the multipurpose stadium was the first outside the USA to be designed to host NFL games, made possible by a retractable pitch.

The stadium's natural-turf pitch, used for football matches, fully retracts to reveal an artificial playing surface for American football games and music concerts – this is one of the design choices Populous made to make the stadium a sports and entertainment hub that would attract visitors all year round.

"What made the project unique wasn't any single innovation, but the ambition to rethink what a stadium could be," Populous managing director and global head of design Christopher Lee told Dezeen.

"From the outset, the brief wasn't simply to replace White Hart Lane," he continued.

"It was to create a new home for Tottenham Hotspur that felt authentic to the club, its supporters and the local community, while setting a new benchmark for the experience of attending football and live events."

According to Lee, Populous designed the stadium seating as if it were a concert arena, working with acoustic engineers Vanguardia to create an environment that would generate a sense of atmosphere when the bowl is filled with spectators.

"We worked with [Vanguardia] to design the acoustic environment to make it one of the loudest stadiums but also one where reverberation time and acoustic echoes were tuned so songs and chanting would last longer," said Lee.

The seats were designed at the steepest angle allowed by regulations, up to 35 degrees, aiming to bring fans closer to the pitch.

Wrapping the stadium's asymmetric bowl are metal cladding and swathes of glazing, including a protruding glass volume that marks the entrance at the West Stand.

Tall glass facades also hug around the southern end of the stadium, revealing views from the street of two large tree-like columns supporting the 17,500-capacity South Stand, a defining feature of the stadium and the largest single-tier stand in the UK.

Topping the 34-metre-tall South Stand is a glass walkway, where visitors can walk out to touch the cockerel above.

Underneath the iconic stand is The Market, a five-storey-tall glass atrium containing a large food and drinks hall, with a 65-metre bar that stretches the length of the pitch's goal line.

Although there are exclusive spaces at the stadium, named Sky Lounges, Populous purposefully designed The Market as a vibrant hospitality space to be enjoyed by all visitors, regardless of ticket price.

Lee aspired for the stadium to be "a piece of community infrastructure rather than simply a football ground," which, after seven years, has contributed to its enduring legacy.

"Perhaps one of the project's most enduring impacts has been the way it democratised the stadium experience," said Lee.

"Historically, there was a clear distinction between hospitality and general admission, with the better experiences reserved for those paying the highest ticket prices. We wanted to dissolve that traditional hierarchy."

Lee believes the ethos of prioritising the fan experience at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has impacted the design of stadiums around the world.

"I think that philosophy has had a lasting influence on stadium design," he said. "Increasingly, clubs recognise that the quality of a stadium isn't defined by its most exclusive spaces, but by how successfully it curates a diverse range of experiences for everyone.

"Ultimately, that's what democratising the fan experience means."

When the stadium opened in 2019, Lee described it as "the best stadium in the world" – a belief he still holds today.

"What's interesting is that seven years later, the conversation isn't really about individual features anymore," he said. "It's about the authenticity of the experience, and I think that's why the stadium has endured as a benchmark."

"The project demonstrated that a contemporary stadium can be both globally ambitious and deeply rooted in its local identity. Those two things are often presented as opposites, but they don’t have to be – in Tottenham, they reinforce one another."

"Many of the technical innovations have now been emulated elsewhere, which is exactly what happens with influential projects," Lee continued. "But what is much harder to replicate is the emotional connection people have with the building."

The photography is by Hufton + Crow unless stated.

Future Stadium

This article is part of Future Stadium, our series exploring the growing role of monumental sports buildings in architecture and urbanism around the world.