The cricket ground was established on this site in 1814 by the Marylebone Cricket Club, which developed the rules for the game; he still owns the stadium.
The project involves an increase in the capacity of the stands from 29.5 thousand to 37 thousand seats. For this, it is planned to demolish 5 of the 7 existing sectors and replace them with new ones, reminiscent of music stands stacked on top of each other with significant gaps between them. Also, the architects have developed a project for 4 racks for floodlights, which can be pulled out and removed as needed.
Herzog & de Meuron are only engaged in part of an overall £ 400m modernization plan for the stadium. Its implementation will take about 10 years and will begin no earlier than 2011. In addition to the obligatory construction of elite housing in the adjacent territories in such cases to reimburse the costs, it is planned to increase the area of the field by 20%, to build a new sports infrastructure, a museum, administration offices and others.
But the most daring plan seems to be the use of underground space under the training field. On two underground levels, there will be a cricket training center with artificial grass courts, an auditorium and a cinema, a sports medicine clinic, a gym, a swimming pool, a spa, squash courts, a library with an archive and a garage for 350 cars. These spaces will be bordered by Victorian-era railroad tunnels that will be developed by the nearby Wellington Hospital, which will open a nuclear medicine center that needs a secure facility.
It should be noted that this is not the first experience of cooperation with leading architects for Lords Stadium and the Marylebone Cricket Club: in 2000, a press center awarded with the Sterling Prize was built there according to the project of the Bureau of Futche Systems; however, its reconstruction will not touch.
