UNStudio in collaboration with Johan Cruijff ArenA designed a winning plan for the Korean National Football Centre in Seoul. Focusing on health, wellness, science, technology, education, and promoting a healthy lifestyle, the project was selected as the winning design in an international closed competition that took place in March this year.
Commissioned by the Korean Football Association (KFA), the new state of the art National Football Centre in Seoul will take on two programs, it will become home to the Korean national team and their trainers, as well as a laboratory for future generations helping to foster their careers.
In the conception phase of the master plan, UNStudio gathered a team of industry specialists including an international team of leading football stadium managers, alongside specialists in sports science and digital data collection, to generate a project “based on lessons learned from other top international football clubs and training centers”.
The Netherlands is a very proud footballing nation. We have many top players and trainers in teams all over the globe. As the inventors of ‘Total Football’, to us football is not just a sport; it’s an expression of culture, a science and philosophy. Football brings people together, it provides them with a sense of comradery, of belonging and of national pride. -- Ben van Berkel, Founder & Principal Architect, UNStudio.
Located on a 450,427 m2 site in Cheonan-shi, Chungnam-do – the new National Football Centre (NFC) put in place shared facilities for women, men, and youth. Designed to cultivate top league players, the project is also a destination for football fans to enjoy the story of Korean football. Housing two stadiums and over a dozen sports field typologies, natural running tracks and indoor gymnasiums, the intervention is also linked to specialist sports medics and treatment centers. The central public plaza, the focal point of the master plan, is surrounded by the three main buildings, the museum, the indoor stadium, and the outdoor stadium.
In the Netherlands, we understand the importance of training footballers from a young age. We invest a great deal in our youth, as well as in new technologies and state of the art tools and techniques for the education and excellence of football -- Ben van Berkel, Founder & Principal Architect, UNStudio.
Finally, for the competition, UNStudio created also an urban branding manual to serve as a blueprint for key architectural and urban aspects of the masterplan and outlines specifications for various scales of detail that adhere to the original guiding principles of the design, focusing on Health, Wellness, Science and Technology.
- Client: Korea Football Association, (KFA)
- Location: Cheonan-shi, Chungnam-do, Korea
- Building site: 450,427㎡
- Program: Campus Masterplan and Urban Branding Strategy, 1 Outdoor Stadium with management facilities (1000-1500 Seats), 1 Indoor Stadium with support facilities, The National Team health, and resort facility, Museum for Korean Football, supporting training fields and recreation, youth hostel, and retail.
- Status: Competition 1st place
- UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Gerard Loozekoot with Harlen Miller, Crystal Tang, and Suhan Na, Luigi Olivieri, Zirong Zhao
- Advisors: Amsterdam ArenA – Stadium Logistics and Sports Science: Henk Markerink, Sander van Stiphout, Max Reckers
- Visualizations: Brick Visual
