Allianz Arena, Munich

The Allianz Arena has a delightfully surreal appearance. The exterior is covered in tufted, translucent material; viewed from afar, the stadium resembles a giant, quilted doughnut. At night, it becomes positively radiant: the façade is lit from within, which means that the entire arena glows. (The windows of a hundred and six luxury boxes can be partially discerned behind the curved scrim.) On most evenings, the building emits a soft white light, reflecting the silvery tone of the synthetic skin, but on nights when one of the two Munich soccer clubs has a home game—the teams share the stadium—it changes its skin color: red for Bayern Munich, blue for the Munich Lions. The shifting lighting schemes atop the Empire State Building seem timid compared with this chameleon.

The arena retains its allure during the day. The unusual material—ETFE, or ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene—gives the stadium a cushiony texture, as if it were an oversized, permanently moored blimp; you want to climb up and touch it. And its subtle white hue eerily duplicates the Munich sky on a cloudy winter afternoon—the stadium practically disappears. In the sun, it brightens. The 2,760 tufts—made of two sheets of ETFE, each 0.2 millimetres thick, which are sewn together and filled with air—are arranged in a strict diamond pattern, giving the façade a subtle sleekness. There are obvious jokes to be made about the Allianz Arena—one could say that it resembles the Michelin Man, or even a soccer ball—but Herzog and de Meuron are too good to play trite visual games, and the building easily transcends such literal-minded comparisons.

via: newyorker.com