Stadiums
Still notes that the Colosseum’s lines of sight, number of egress points and people feeding each vomitorium were all based on principles of Greek mathematics and geometric analysis. (Fun fact: a vomitorium is an entrance or exit passage out of the amphitheatre, not a place to intentionally eject that day’s lunch.) “Apply that to buildings and you have an intuitive sense of how to move from one place to another. Get the geometry right and it becomes far more instinctive to follow your nose. We have found in our stadium work that people will often try a configuration, get it wrong a few times, then eventually iterate into something that’s nearly correct. Well, you can get it right in the first instance if you understand the maths.” In Still’s view, good venue design – like quality food, stories or clothing – is always built around human experience. “If you find yourself getting disorientated in a built space, that’s because the architects got it wrong. But if you don’t need to think at all about how to get from A to B, that’s because they got it right.” THE HUMAN PROBLEM After earning his PhD, Still started to investigate the causes of crowd- related accidents, and also became involved in the associated litigation. Identifying where trouble spots are, before there’s a problem, is essential. In his workshops, he questions students about how often they’ve been at a venue and felt their safety was threatened. Most of the hands go up. However, those regular near misses usually go unreported. It’s only incidents like recent unrest and police action at the Champions League final in the Stade de France “One of the failures at the Stade de France was that Bluetooth connection on fans’ phones had to be turned on to get tickets verified”
SWIFT EXIT While health and safety wouldn’t have been as strict in ancient Rome, crowds dispersed quickly
lot of thought into the geometry of moving people around complex spaces. Pompeii had its toilets built outside the arena,” Still explains. “There was a National Geographic programme looking into crowd evacuation at the Colosseum compared to the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing – and the Colosseum stood up as being damn near perfect.” CLEAR LINE OF SIGHT TO THE VOMITORIUM A critical factor in any sports space is the human being. The fact that people are pretty much the same now as they were 10,000 years ago means some principles are going to hold, no matter what. “Various elements of a stadium are fixed because of the human frame. Take sight lines – there’s an optimal rake for placing people. At a concert on flat ground, you can’t see past anyone sitting in front of you, but at a cinema everyone gets perfect line of sight. The rake, angles of view and available space are all mathematical relationships. An audience’s level of enjoyment is a consequence of getting the geometry right.”
steady grounds One of the major crowd safety documents in the UK is The Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds , aka the Green Guide , published by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority. It is seen around the world as the source of best practice for design, planning and safety at sports venues. Now in its sixth edition, the Green Guide is used by architects and designers for the development and refurbishment of stadiums, covering such topics as: • Calculating safe capacity • Crowd circulation • Barriers and separating elements • Seating and standing accommodation • Demountable structures • Fire safety • Communications and control • Mechanical and electrical installations • Medical and first-aid provision • Media provision “The Green Guide has grown from a small pamphlet into the fully comprehensive guide to safety and technology in and around sports grounds,” says Professor Still, a regular contributor. “It’s pretty much the bible for stadium design and management.” Order the Green Guide at the following: sgsa.org.uk/greenguide
68 FEED:XTREME SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022
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