/// click this to see our new book of photography /// :::new mineirão stadium:::

Located in the surroundings of the Pampulha lagoon, in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), the Mineirão Stadium was originally planned by Gaspar Garreto and Eduardo Mendes Guimarães in the late 40’s, and inaugurated in 1965 as the second largest Stadium in the world. In December 2010, the Minas Arena Consortium commissioned BCMF Architects (Bruno Campos, Marcelo Fontes and Silvio Todeschi) to be responsible for the New Mineirão executive project, as part of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) of the renovation of the Stadium, one of the venues for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The brief required BCMF to review GPA&A/GMP’s basic project, part of the tender documents, and to deliver a new design for construction according to the PPP and Consortium demands. The innovations and concepts proposed by BCMF had the main purpose to integrate the venue to its surrounding context, maximize the commercial operation of the complex, as well as to meet new FIFA requirements and technical guidelines.

The new complex was inaugurated on December 2012, and aims to go beyond its primary role as world-class sports venue, also offering a range of services, retail, culture and entertainment for the city, becoming a new hub of daily activities linked to the touristic Pampulha Cultural Complex through a landscaped platform that unfolds as a 80,000m2 stepped plaza adapting to the existing topography,. New programs were strategically embedded in the split-levels of the Esplanade, to attract the pedestrians from the surroundings and activate the semi-public space 7 days a week. This multi-functional “artificial topography” also reinforces, through the empty spaces around the stadium, the monumental iconography of the original architecture of the Mineirão, whose 1960s facade is heritage listed.