Living on Holy Turf

Abstract

What a church is to churchgoers, the soccer stadium is to soccer fans. At a time when churches are looking for members, soccer clubs that are running out of space are building bigger and bigger sites for adulation. As was also the case in London. In the summer of 2006, the venerable Arsenal Football Club moved out of its old home, the august Highbury Stadium, and into the larger Emirates Stadium, scarcely five minutes away on foot. Left behind was an empty stadium full of precious emotions and memories of all those great victories, unforgettable goals, and bitter defeats. To tear down the stadium they had begun using in 1913 would thus have been unthinkable. And so the idea was hatched to play Highbury in a new way, to transform it into a residential area. The walls were left standing and the stands are being rebuilt, turned into luxury apartments and lofts. Where, over the decades, twenty-two players tore after the ball, in future the residents will be able to sit on the benches in the park designed by landscape architect Christopher Bradley-Hole. The lion’s share of apartments was sold before the planning phase was even completed.