Bayern Munich v. Germany

The new football stadium built in Munich by Swiss Minimalist architects Herzog & de Meuron is something of a chameleon. Named after its sponsors, the upmarket insurance company Allianz Arena, it is home to Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich and also to Second Division 1860 Munich; and the stadium’s façade can glow in red, blue or a neutral grey-white, thanks to pneumatic gas-filled cushions. But who the real masters of the building are became clear when, on the evening of its inauguration, Bayern Munich chose to play not against their local opponents but against the German national team.

Despite the first-class players on view, however, the event was definitely second-rate. Seal, who goes out with supermodel Heidi Klum, sang a few songs but could barely be heard over football fan chants demanding ‘We wanna see Heidi!’. He was followed by German chanteuse Sarah O’Connor, who surreally altered the lyrics of the national anthem, a faux pas that subsequently kept the tabloids entertained for weeks. And throughout the game beer-filled Bayern supporters kept throwing stuff at Arsenal’s Jens Lehmann, goalkeeper for the national team and the main rival to Bayern’s Oliver Khan. To cap it all, they also took the mickey out of the people in the 106 VIP boxes and ‘event spaces’, mocking them with chants of ‘You’re only here for the food!’ They have a point: in the host country of the 2006 World Cup football has indeed become strangely de rigueur among the ruling class.

It also became clear why the architects themselves chose not to turn up for the occasion, donating their (rather average) reserved seats to dedicated football fans Andreas Gursky and Thomas Demand instead. The tense atmosphere of the event bore out the complaints of those who had criticized the stadium as an ‘archaic colosseum’, a piece of ‘brutal nonsense’ in the form of ‘Tupperware architecture’. Munich, after all, is also home to Günter Behnisch’s 1972 Olympic Stadium, discarded to make way for the new site. With its airy structure, opening onto the surrounding landscape, the Olympic Stadium has long been considered the epitome of democratic stadium architecture, whereas the new arena simply follows British stadium standards – a compact, closed design, with seating in close proximity to the pitch and with a retractable roof. In Germany such an enclosed design immediately triggers fears of Nazi-type assemblies: an article on it in the conservative daily Die Welt was even headlined ‘Living means fighting’.

The real problems, however, are rather different, such as the VIP area’s embarrassing Mastercard-Gold wall-panelling, reflecting the self-importance of Munich’s upper crust, or the fact that the arena is very close to a bend in a motorway. (A large number of accidents have apparently been caused by drivers being distracted by an unexpected encounter with a massive UFO.) In this respect, it’s perhaps a good thing that expensive plans to equip the 286 million Euro structure with a pneumatic façade relaying news headlines were eventually shelved in an attempt to avoid causing further irritation. All in all, the Allianz Arena has turned out to be not so much a great work of art as a status symbol for Bavaria, Germany’s richest, and most provincial, of provinces.