Satisfying results have also been obtained by designs in which both the stands and roofs are swept round the pitch in some form. Examples include the Stadium of the Alps in Turin. This approach may be difficult on tight urban plots, partly because of insufficient space, partly because it may be desirable that the stadium façades follow the street line, and partly because swept forms may ‘look wrong’ in some contexts. But there is Philip Cox’s elegant Sydney Football Stadium to prove it can be done (Figure 5.5). As in so many success- ful designs the playing area is submerged below ground (about 5m in this case) which usefully
lowers the stadium profile. The original design had the fluidly-shaped roof floating free above the seat- ing structure – soaring high along the sides of the pitch, where most people want to sit and where the depth of seating extends back furthest and highest; and swooping down close to ground level at the pitch ends, where there are fewer and shal- lower seating tiers. This dip towards ground level also reduced the apparent scale where the stadium approached a residential area. But the gap between the roof and the rear of the spectator tiers proved too great and offered insufficient weather protection, a problem which had later to be rectified by a multi- million dollar contract to fill in the gaps.