Cluj Arena
More than just a stadium. It's a place, a story, memories of a stadium that has passed, hopes for another stadium that replaced it.
Cluj Arena is more than just a stadium. It's a place, a story, memories of a stadium that has passed, hopes for another stadium that replaced it, all accompanied by ambitions, pride, impatience, curiosity, controversies, disputes, and above all, the courage to try something different. From the beginning, the project aimed to evolve along a path that responds to a vision by seeking the details and solutions that translate thoughts into reality. The architectural ingredients have overlapped spatial ideas about interior and exterior, underground and aboveground, together and separate, visible and concealed, discreet and monumental, near and far, transparent and opaque, common and special, continuous and fragmented, occasional and everyday, white and black.
What ultimately gives it an iconic identity is the fluid silhouette and the materiality of its envelope, which is difficult to distinguish as a roof or a façade. A huge covering spills over the stands and beyond, dressing everything in gentle curves and constant flow. This shell, although very visible, remains mysterious to the distant viewer in terms of its materiality. Is it canvas? What color does it have? What lies beyond it? From a closer perspective, the questions start to find answers: the structure hovers and reveals the green rectangle inside and the colors of the athletic oval. The volume separates into four large wings, articulated with gentle asymmetry, and what seemed immense from a distance becomes less imposing in proximity and closer to intimate forces.
Sheet Metal Worker:
Gabi Capusan.
The gaze passes almost undisturbed from one side to the other, through cracks and even through the façade in backlight. The shadows are both gentle and sharp, while the sun, when it sees one side or the other, turns everything it encounters into gold. Clouds, as they pass or gather above, reflect or accentuate the contrast. The sunset becomes even more real, taken over by facades and reflected in the bed of the Somes River. After nightfall, a luminous constellation takes on the mission of outlining the forms. Every day, the ritual repeats itself with different skies and with or without the leaves of trees, grass, or snow. Sometimes, during a performance, the arena literally lights up. Light traverses the facades, transitioning from a dazzling cold white of the nocturnal scene, which transforms the playing field into a stage, to the warmer tones of the spaces beneath the stands, and then to a softer light that illuminates the surrounding pathways like fading waves.
The team that contributed to this architecture comes from the DiscosiTiganas office. They were accompanied in the design process by: Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Bogart Construct, Das Engineering, Grup 4 Installations, Paul Gillieron Acoustics. The construction was carried out by: ACI Cluj, Con-A Sibiu, and Transilvania Constructii.
Performance
Athletes enter the stadium to excel and surpass their limits in the name of the Olympic motto: "Citius, Altius, Fortius." The audience gathers to celebrate their achievements, and the stadium becomes a place of spectacle, encouragement, satisfaction, and sometimes bitter moments. Modern arenas combine this duality of function with high-class architecture, innovative solutions, and quality engineering, providing cities in which they are built with true landmarks of modern living. Cluj Arena has quickly earned a special place in the minds and hearts of the people of Cluj, and beyond, rightly being regarded as the most beautiful stadium in Transylvania, the Jewel of Cluj.
For us, the stadium was first and foremost a challenge, the desire to be part of a unique project and the ambition to push boundaries. The roof and facades, although different in terms of materials, thickness, and technical approach, form a cohesive whole thanks to the geometry and specially developed color scheme for this construction.
Due to its exceptional microscopic structure, the color changes depending on the ambiance, the angle of incident light, and the time of day. We are delighted to have been chosen as tin smiths and to have successfully met the demanding requirements set by the architects and the construction team, and we remain open to similar challenges.
What color does the Arena have? It is white. Shadows are tones that gracefully accentuate the forms. In contact with the sun's rays and also with the nighttime lights, the whiteness of the facades and roof transitions discreetly or intensely into gold. Due to the continuous curves, the angle of light incidence is constantly changing, altering the pearly color at each point.
The special paint works like a mirror, and the dark sky makes the edges of the roof sparkle in contrast or, conversely, blend and lose their contours against the backdrop of white clouds. The blue of the sky is reflected on the facade, while the green of the trees or the slope at the base captures and modifies the tones of the metal cladding, and the setting sun plays with the colors every day, making it impossible to say what color the Arena is.
Without distancing itself from concrete, aluminum, polyurethane or epoxy floor coatings, or the various shades of gray, the special white of the facades and roof corresponds to the black and white flags of the Universitatea club. In the end, what color does the Arena have? All colors.
Color
The geometric rhythm of the folding joints in the roofing contributes to the perception of the roof surface, especially when accentuated by shadows. Two successive gutters are drawn at different levels, the first where the slope intensifies and the roof spills over the facade, and the second at their intersection. Two lower roofs of the turf areas, with simpler geometries, prepare for the symmetrical mirrored movement of the larger roofs of the stands.
The interior space is embraced by the roof while the exterior derives from it. Its continuity and double curvature make it reminiscent of old roofs covered in folded metal sheets by skilled roofers, except that the geometry of the canopies over the stands required the use of numerically controlled cutting and bending machines. The production and installation technology combined the design of each individual segment, directly created in three dimensions on a virtual model processed by computer-controlled machines, with traditional high-altitude installation using utility climbers. It's both very new and very old in the same process.
