Foster + Partners lands San Siro prize

Image: San Siro Stadium, Jose Luis Hidalgo R., CC BY 2.0

Foster + Partners have been chosen to design a new San Siro Stadium for Italian Serie A giants Inter Milan and AC Milan.

Gazzetta said Foster + Partners will team up with Manica, a studio already chosen by AC Milan for their now shelved new stadium in San Donato.

Foster + Partners won the international competition for the design, snatching the prize from some of the most important studios in the world.

Inter and Milan evaluated 13 submissions and selected five finalists: Populous, known for having designed the “Cathedral” that was to have been built on the site of the current Meazza, the Swiss Herzog & de Meuron, Britain’s BDP Pattern with the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, the American AECOM with the architect Dan Meis and, Manica with Foster + Partners.

The San Siro Stadium (also known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza) is a football stadium in the San Siro district of Milan, Italy. It has a seating capacity of 80,018 making it the largest stadium in Italy and one of the largest stadiums in Europe. It is the home stadium of the Serie A teams AC Milan and Inter Milan.

Gazzetta further stated that Inter and Milan have not yet seen the drawings and drafts of the project, which will arrive at a later time.

The goal of the two clubs is to present the project to the Municipality of Milan by the first half of 2026.

In the coming months there will be meetings and proposals from Foster and Partners to arrive at a preliminary project and then a final version.

In February Milan will host the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in the “old” San Siro.

Populous won an earlier contest to replace the San Siro in 2021, beating a consortium comprising Manica and Italian firm Sportium. But its proposal, known as ‘the Cathedral’, was scrapped following delays to the new-build scheme and the threat of a heritage listing for the San Siro, formally known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza.

A demolition ban on the second tier of the 70-year-old San Siro will come into effect later this year.

Both teams then went on to investigate stadium projects of their own. Inter Milan continued working with Populous on a project to build a 70,000-seat stadium in Rozzano in south-west Milan. AC Milan was meanwhile thought to have considered the San Donato area for its own rival proposal.

But, earlier this year, it emerged that both sides had come together again on a joint stadium development and in May, the clubs presented proposals to the city of Milan to purchase the San Siro stadium and the surrounding area to allow development work to begin.

According to the clubs, a contract with the Milan authorities to take control of the San Siro could be completed in July.

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