Eckersley O’Callaghan provided facade engineering for the Premier League football club’s iconic new stadium, which was inspired by the gothic architecture of Westminster Abbey. The project was granted planning consent in 2017 but later abandoned.
From 2015-18 EOC worked as facade engineer for Chelsea FC’s proposed redevelopment of their historic home stadium, Stamford Bridge. The design, developed by Herzog & de Meuron with Adamson Associates, featured 264 sculpted brick piers, each unique in height and span, creating a cathedral-like space. The project would have seen an increase of 50% capacity to 60,000 spectators by expanding the footprint the stadium over two adjacent railway lines.
Our role was to develop the facade and roofing proposals from concept stage through to tender stage. Among the main challenges was the complexity of the brickwork and merits of prefabricated versus hand-laid solutions. Difficult site access and weight restrictions over the main access road limited the scope for using fully prefabricated solutions.
To reduce weight for pier elements, a brick-faced UHPC solution was developed, which would have been among the first large-scale uses of UHPC in the UK. Full-scale mock-ups were developed to test both pre-fabricated and hand-laid brickwork options and to develop the tectonic expression of the architecture.
Other wall types included glazed curtain walling, terracotta, and bronze cladding elements. The envelope was also subject to onerous security and acoustic requirements as well as thermal and environmental criteria.
Planning consent was granted in January 2017, but the project remains unrealised.
© Eckersley O’Callaghan 2025
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