Building on previously revealed plans, Barcelona have now unveiled new renderings that progress the proposed development of the Camp Nou site.
Despite recent form and club turmoil, Barcelona are still one of the biggest and best clubs in the world, and they deserve a stadium that is fitting of that status. While Camp Nou is world renowned, a hallowed place within which some of the finest players ever to play theme have performed, it is also old and in need of a refit – one that would enable the club to compete financially with their rivals throughout Europe. It’s a plan that’s been on the cards for over half a decade now, the last update coming back in 2018 with seemingly little to no movement since, but now the club have released revised details of ‘Espai Barça’ –the project to remodel Camp Nou, build a new Palau Blaugrana and a Campus Barça – to make it viable and sustainable financially and to turn it into the biggest and most innovation sports and entertainment space within a European city.
Most of the club's biggest competitors around Europe already have state-of-the-art stadiums or they are under construction. The modernisation of the Barça’s sporting facilities is a crucial project, but one that arguably comes more than 15 years too late, and is now of unavoidable urgency for the future feasibility of Barça. It is a vital project necessary to reflate the Club’s finances and maintain Barça at the forefront of world sport because only with facilities worthy of a Club like FC Barcelona can the organisation compete financially and on the field with their European competitors.
Espai Barça continues to be an unfulfilled dream after the members approved the project in a referendum back in 2014. Seven years later the Club has invested 145 million euros and only carried out 5 percent of the project. So seven years on and the original Espai Barça, the plan to modernise Camp Nou and the club’s sporting facilities, itself needs modernising, taking into account the latest technology and sustainability aspects. But it needs another referendum, which started on 17 October, had to be suspended, and is now set to be concluded on 23 October. Talk about long winded.
As for the stadium itself, the updated plans retain the Mediterranean character with wide terraces that are typical of the Nikken Sekkei construction project, the Japanese studio that came out as winner in the international architecture competition. Updates to the proposal include the fact that the first tier would not be rebuilt, which would allow all season ticket holders there to retain their places, as well as moving the VIP boxes up to between the second and third tier and doubling their number. The capacity of 105,000 would not change under the new plans. If approved, the board are hoping to finance the required 1.5 billion euros, 900 million of which are reserved for the stadium, over a period of 35 years.
For full details of the Espai Barça project, head to fcbarcelona.com
