Dan Meis: Designing Everton Football Club's new stadium

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0:30us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

0:51Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service, the home of original storytelling. On the 23rd of August 2025, the inaugural Premier League match at Everton's much-anticipated new stadium will kick off. Back in 2021, former pro footballer Neil Dans joined innovative sports architect Dan Meese as he commenced the design process for the new football stadium. The difference between a sports building and other buildings is that they're all about the experience of the people that are there. An office building, it could be the most famous world's tallest tower, and a lot of people would recognize it, but it's basically the same thing, just stacked up.

1:34A sports building is all about capturing the sort of history and event and spectacle. And so this idea of really thinking through how does the building enhance and create the experience and the memory that people carry through generations. You are listening to In The Studio on the BBC World Service. I am Neil Dans, a professional football player, TV sports pundit, and a person who is fascinated by all forms of creativity. On this episode, I will be taking you on a deep dive into the creative mind of acclaimed sports architect Dan Meese, who has created some of the most groundbreaking and well-known stadiums all around the world.

2:25As a professional footballer formerly of the Premier League, I've played in hundreds of stadiums, some good, some bad, and this is where my interest in sports architecture has stemmed from. I have played and visited a number of the arenas Dan has designed. I have admired his work from afar. I've been aware of the developments in Liverpool around his work, on the soon-to-be-built Everton FC Stadium, and I'm fascinated to understand more about this project, which is still fully in motion. Right now, we're in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, outside Dan's LA headquarters, about to meet the man himself.

3:11The man who designed the likes of the Safeco Field in Seattle, the Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, the Stadio della Rome in Rome, and the Staples Centre in LA, which is considered one of the best arenas all around the world. Anyway, less of me, and let's go into Dan's studio and find out more about what sports architecture is all about. My first question was all about how Dan got into this area of architecture. I played sports in high school, and I loved sports,

3:44Dan Meis:but I didn't think about being a sports architect. I ended up transferring to school in Chicago my sophomore year and Chicago was a place of architecture and for for a kid from Colorado it was mind-boggling to all of a sudden see skyscrapers under construction and then know that there were a handful of these firms that that designed and built these skyscrapers and so it was it was very intoxicating. So that's where I got exposed to big buildings but it was also a period of time in the early 80s where there was a recession and there weren't many buildings being built. I'd spent a lot of time working on drawings of things that weren't happening.

4:21And through a weird quirk, I was dating a woman who had grown up in Kansas City. And she convinced me to go to Kansas City. And that's when I found out that there were only a handful of firms, mostly based in Kansas City, almost entirely based in Kansas City, that were doing all of the new stadiums and arenas. So when I went through and I saw this, I was very intrigued because I thought if I could get into Kansas City and learn the secret of these buildings, then I could go anywhere and do it.

4:54All right, so the idea is that we're going to try and settle on what we're going to put on the boards, I guess, and talk about these images. The one thing, And Jan, I know I had a question on how, was it determined how many suites they were asking for? Yes. Yeah. Dan has just stepped out of the room and I must say I'm in awe by his office. It's a hive of energy, creativity and inspiration. And I must admit, it's not what I expected an architect's space to be like. There's loads of books everywhere and so many cool, fun memorabilia from some of his past work. I'm currently looking at a big vintage scoreboard and I'm sure it's not every day you see one of them in an architect's office.

5:40As I watch Dan talk to various members of his team, I look over at a rather large model of a forthcoming building. I feel compelled to find out more about his approach to the creation of sports buildings and why he's considered such a leader in his field. You know, at this point in my career, a lot of the early ideas really happen sometimes on a plane, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes a quick sketch in the morning. And it does become a kind of process where I'm thinking about something. I tend to get very obsessive about a particular project or client. And then an idea will hit me and I will scribble and create very rough little sketches, sometimes on napkins, sometimes in a sketchbook.

6:23And then coming into the office, it's really about, I've got a lot smarter people around me that know how to take those things and then turn them into a building and be able to not only start to develop it, but think really clearly about how do you communicate those ideas then back to the client and ultimately the fans. Later on, we touched base on Zoom. I was intrigued to know how Dan actually gets the work. Does he have countless offers to choose from or does he have to compete with other architects? Sometimes it comes to us and it's a bit packaged for us. We need a stadium and we need this X amount of seats and here's the site and they'll give us your idea or come and talk to us with these criteria in mind.

7:10Most of my projects have not come that way. Often it's because I know that there is a project in the future and I get a chance to meet with the owner and the club and to talk to them about what we think about them. And I think our greatest success has come from clients telling us that there was a point where they felt we knew them better than they knew them. Maybe a bit unique to our practice is that we tend to be forward with not the sort of how many seats and sight lines and all the kind of technical things. We really talk about the history of the club, the history of the place, you know, what's unique about your fans and why do people love this club?

7:51Why do they love this building that they've been in? And either if we're going to renovate or we're going to move to another one, how do you keep that magic? It's you can't take it for granted. It's not just about a new building for fans. These are it's their home. It's the home of the place that, you know, for generations they've connected with. So it's very different than if I was designing an office building for a developer and they would be very kind of cut and dry. I need X amount of square feet and here's our land. And, you know, that's that's the thing. So this is this is very different in that way.

8:28Dan is well known for the detail and nuance in his design. Everything has a purpose and a reason for being included. And many times, these are not just functional, but very much linked to the culture and history of the place the sports buildings are located. The next day, Dan and I discussed this approach. When I was engaged to start thinking about a new stadium for Aes Roma, what would you do in Rome, a place of some of the most incredible classical architecture of all time, which is very intimidating. and I had an owner who was aware of that and talked about the Colosseum as the most famous sports experience building.

9:11How do I convince him and really everyone else that I am looking at the history of Rome and distilling it into something that's modern and at the same time not just dropping some contemporary form into a city that wouldn't have any connection to that. And so what I did is I dug very deep on the history of the Coliseum, you know, how it was built, where the materials came from, you know, what drove the kind of classical organization of the various elements. The incredible thing was how sophisticated it was from event level and support spaces and VIP. It's all very similar to a modern building. but one of the little kind of light bulb moments was that I realized that the the quarries where the travertine in the original coliseum came from were still there they're still in the mountains and they're still quarrying marble from those mountains and so we came up with this idea of building a very light and airy steel and glass stadium that was very contemporary but then creating a scrim or a curtain of travertine around it with a kind of movement and pattern to it that would recall the Colosseum, but not in a very literal way, but we could build it with the travertine from the same quarry.

10:37So that idea of grabbing back to that history from hundreds of years ago and bringing it forward to a very modern building, that was, for me, one of those very rare opportunities to connect both ends of history. I'm so impressed how deep Dan goes in order to make sure the design is bespoke. And I'm sure his clients are too. The good thing about that for clients is that when they hire us, they know that they're getting my personal attention. The challenge is that because of that, I can't do five of them at one time. It becomes very deeply ingrained in me. I think about it in the middle of the night.

11:16I think about it in the shower in the morning. And so it's really hard to do more than one at a time. We can have different projects in different stages because obviously I have a team of people. And once, you know, my role of kind of setting the direction of the design and working with a client is set, then at some point it just becomes a building and it takes a team of people. And then we have other consultants and then it becomes something that, you know, has a life of its own. And it does make it challenging for me to set up that next project because, you know, it's not like they're just waiting at the door.

11:54I have to still go find those projects and build relationships with other clients. So it is a bit of a juggling act. So what draws Dan to these projects? Is it the prestige, the challenge or even the location? I really like underdog projects, not the biggest club necessarily. And we're working on a competition right now for Fiorentino. in Florence and obviously the incredible architectural history of Florence, that is really interesting to me. Is there an opportunity to show a different perspective than just a typical sports architect coming along and telling them how to put a roof over it or expand that stand or something?

12:35Pencil on the pad so we feel it more. The most important thing with the Florence project is to try and figure out a way that But there's a very, very historical kind of colonnade and campanile that's a big part of the project that has these amazing spiral ramps that are all part of the original Nervy design. So to put a new stadium inside here, to kind of drop a new bowl inside the existing stadium so you get a modern seating and a canopy without overly encroaching on the historic building is really the trick, I believe. Dan clearly loves a challenge. Whilst back in Liverpool and speaking over Zoom, Dan shows me some pictures of past models and speaks more about his process of pitching and trying to communicate his vision with clients and how he still uses tried and tested methods, despite his reputation of being an innovator.

13:34The other thing that I'm very much a protector of is actual physical modeling. What I'm talking about, though, are models that are being used to actually design the building. It's more like modeling in clay. And again, as the building develops, the model becomes more and more detailed. I still believe that there's a lot of value in doing sort of larger scale. You cut it out of cardboard and glue it together. And you can see the building three-dimensional long before you've really gotten to it in the design of the building. And again, I think clients love it because it's amazing to all of a sudden see it in form versus a drawing.

14:15No matter how detailed the drawing can be or a rendering, it's often very difficult for clients to really understand how big it is and where are the doors. And wait, is that glass or is that metal? And so big physical models are really important. And Everton, you know, was a great example of that. I don't think they expected it. And it was hard because we were in New York and L.A. and we were traveling to Liverpool. So we were shipping some pretty big boxes. But, you know, once the chairman saw the first model of what ultimately became the design, he was in love with it. It made all the difference.

14:56You're listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service

15:07Hello, Greg Jenner here I'm the host of You're Dead to Me the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously Every episode I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history and in this new series we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

15:40So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

15:51In this episode, former pro footballer Neil Dans takes us on a deep dive into the creative mind of sports architect Dan Meese. We spent a lot of time thinking about how our buildings impact our owners and our teams and our fans, but we hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about how the athletes or the artists, in some cases, are affected by them. And it occurred to me that they must have a perspective on it. I mean, it's so important to them, the passion of playing in a particular place. Dan recently formed a partnership with Russian tennis sensation Maria Sharapova to design and deliver branded tennis, health and wellness spas worldwide.

16:33The partnership combines Dan's 30 plus years of expertise with Maria's lifetime experience in training and competing as a world-class athlete. I had always recognized that she was a bit of a fashion icon that kind of transcended sports. And so I reached out to her with the idea that sort of what I just described, that I'm interested in a world-class athlete's perspective on the venues they play in. And the first meeting was really eye-opening. She said something to me that I'll never forget, how she started playing tennis when she was seven years old. And she did it every day, seven days a week, all day long.

17:12But these places were not inspirational at all. They were bunkers with tennis courts. And she wondered about that. Why are these places so drab? And so I learned a lot in that first meeting that she really had a great feel for design and how design can impact one's experience. And she has a great eye. There were things that she said, yeah, I really don't love that, but this is really who I'm about. and turned out that it was very similar to the home she lived in, that she had played a large part in designing. And so that's how our collaboration works, that now what we have is we have clients coming to us that appreciate who she is as an athlete and her history, and they see that what we can do is sort of distill that into an experience.

18:02As a professional, I've played in some very uninspiring grounds, So it's so refreshing hearing the purpose behind Maria and Dan's pursuit of change. We went on to chat about innovation and unfiltered creativity and why Dan thinks he has managed to design so many groundbreaking sports buildings. I've again been lucky to have some opportunities to work on projects that really were groundbreaking in terms of innovation in one way or another. And I think partly why that's happened, maybe counterintuitively, is because I wasn't a sports expert initially. I wasn't a stadium design expert. And so one of the first ones that comes to mind is a project in Japan, the Saitama Arena.

18:52But I kind of naively had this way of thinking about it that, well, what if you took an arena and you split it in half? and you just took half the seats and moved them back and then filled seats in on the side. Toilets unplugged and plugged back in 70 metres later and all the mechanical connections. There's got to be a way to do that. Right now, I'm standing on the outside of Bramley Moor Dock, which is set to host a brand new stadium, which will be the new home for Everton Football Club. The stadium, which is due to open for the start of the 2024 24-25 Premier League season will replace the historic Goodison Park.

19:33In 2019 it was announced that Dan Meese was appointed as the architect of the new stadium and in July that year when Dan shared his concepts for it publicly he blew supporters and naysayers away, thwarting any negativity. However this live project illustrates truly the challenges of being a sports architect in so many ways. I was skeptical about why Everton would even take a meeting with us because I thought, you know, they're not going to hire an American architect. And so I got on a plane, being a little skeptical that it was really going to be worth it. I got to London and I missed my train to Liverpool.

20:14And then I got on the next train and that train stopped halfway to Liverpool. And the whole time, Robert Elstone was waiting for me. And I thought for sure this is going to be a disaster, whether he's even going to take the meeting after all of this. I almost turned around and flew home. It was very close. But when I got to the meeting and heard him talk about the club, I was mesmerized. I mean, I knew a little bit about Everton, but I didn't understand how aware they were of who they were as a club compared to other Premier League clubs. And it was that thing. Those are the things that hook me, this kind of underdog opportunity to take something that's very special and help set it up.

21:05My first ideas that I showed were, what if we took the concept of a more historic English stadium and brought it forward? and what that meant was that most, almost all, English football stadiums started with just a pitch originally and then there were some stands and then as the club got more popular, more stands were built and I was really excited about it. This keeps the magic of what was important to those early buildings and people might not realize why they're unique and why they're different and they don't love having columns in front of them and all of that But there are things about this building that are kind of magical and a charm that if you can bring that forward, you know, it seemed like it was much better than giving them an NFL building in my view.

21:55Well, the chairman hated it, hated everything about that idea. But I think he saw my passion and the passion of my team. Like I flew over four or five of my guys. We were building models in London and then going up to Liverpool to present them. And he really connected with our passion for the club and the project. But it was his sense about he wanted something that looked like he hadn't seen before. And then mixing that notion with what we talked about before with the local materials and something that felt like it grew out of the docks was really important to me. And that's how we got to where we got to, which was a really interesting mix of something that's very contemporary, but also feels like it's very historic, almost like we built it inside the dark.

22:47But getting the job and design approved by the club and supported by the fans wasn't the only challenge. The Liverpool Waterfront is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and there were more challenges ahead for Dan and his team. The UNESCO World Heritage was always an issue, and we knew that it would complicate the planning process. I think I was a believer that it didn't make sense to not consider developing the site, particularly if you were doing it in a very sensitive way. It seemed like the whole reason for having UNESCO World Heritage was to preserve something so that people for generations could come and see it.

23:25But that wasn't what was happening. So their remit and the reality were not really living up to each other. So while it was always there, I think we were confident that one way or another, this was the right thing for Liverpool. The bigger challenge was these are very complex buildings to build if you have a nice flat site with great foundations. We're building a building inside a hole that's filled with water. And it's a huge challenge. And, you know, something that I think it took a long time for the club ownership to really wrap their heads around. It's obviously an amazing site from the standpoint of the doorstep to the city and the mercy and developing that part of Liverpool.

24:13Lots of reasons. But there's literally about£100 million just to make it a site where we would usually start from. In what came as a shock to many in June 2020, Dan announced via his social media that he was no longer involved in the project and was relatively quiet on the matter thereafter. Knowing how much Dan puts into his designs, it only took looking at his face when discussing this to know how much it really troubled him. It was one of the biggest disappointments in my career because it was a bit shocking. I felt like we had devoted so much of our attention and passion to this club and this project because there were a lot of hurdles that we had to make to prove that it could be done there, to convince Liverpool that it should be done there, to convince the, you know, when they went to fans and did their surveys about the support, it was unbelievable.

25:19Even non-Everton, Evertonians, you know, were supportive of the project. And largely that was due to the work we had done and worked so hard. And I had lost another project along the way because I was so devoted to Everton. I had another client that basically said, I don't think you have the bandwidth to do both projects. And so we were taken off a project because of our devotion to Everton. And then all of a sudden I was off Everton. I think what was disappointing to me was that I believe that we, I had a team of 30 people who had been thinking about this building 24-7 for years. And I don't believe there was anybody that was in a better position to help carry that through.

26:06The good thing is that, you know, what can happen in that process is the delivery architect comes in, works with the contractor, and all of a sudden the design gets just beat up and watered down and changed for various reasons. That hasn't happened here. And it's been great to see that, you know, both the club and everyone involved has been pretty protective of the original vision. So I feel really good about that. And, you know, most excitingly, I've been talking to the club about being reengaged. And so that's going to happen really soon. And it feels great to be back in family and feel a part of it.

26:45I mean, it really did feel like, you know, one of my children yanked away from me. It was that excruciating, but has a happy ending. I think there's a myth about the, you know, the architect with the cape and the hat and the, you know, that ires my creation. You will love it. I've never been like that. I believe that the best architecture, besides all the other things we talked about, is a collaboration between the client and the architect. I'd have to think about it but in almost every case every building I've ever built the client was a big part of why it went that direction Spending time interviewing Dan has been so inspirational He's a true virtuoso and I'm really excited to see how things develop with the various projects he's told us about especially what will happen with the new Everton ground So to end, I think it's appropriate that we hear from some of the people who have all bore witness and benefited from Dan's amazing creative vision.

27:51Dan's work is unapologetically design-led. His projects, especially in sport, are iconic. More importantly, they stand the test of time. Dan's legacy will be more than just iconic buildings. They'll be Dan Meese iconic buildings.