UNStudio has teamed up with Johan Cruijff ArenA for their winning masterplan for the Korean National Football Centre in Seoul. Celebrating the history and future of Korean football and the power of sport, the plan also focuses on health, wellness, science, technology, and education

Korean National Football Centre in Seoul

Fact File

Korean National Football Centre in Seoul
Client: Korea Football Association, (KFA)
Location: Cheonan-shi, Chungnam-do, Korea
Building site: 450,427m2
Program: Campus Masterplan and Urban Branding Strategy, 1 Outdoor Stadium with management facilities (1000-1500 Seats), 1 Indoor Stadium with support facilities, The National Team health and resort facility, Museum for Korean Football, supporting training fields and recreation, youth hostel and retail
Status: Competition 1st place
©Brick Visual UNStudio

UNStudio’s masterplan was selected as the winning design in an international closed competition that took place in March this year. Commissioned by the Korean Football Association (KFA), the new state of the art National Football Centre (NFC) will not only become home to the Korean national team and their trainers, but also a laboratory for future generations of top league players, helping to foster their careers.

Korean National Football Centre in Seoul

For the development of the masterplan, UNStudio brought together an international team of leading football stadium managers, along with specialists in sports science and digital data collection. This team of industry specialists has worked with world-renowned football leagues and stadiums throughout Europe and the Middle East. The essential elements for the masterplan are therefore based on lessons learned from other top international football clubs and training centres. Johan Cruijff ArenA brings 20 years of knowledge and experience in advising sport projects all over the world, such as for world cup host country Brazil. The stadium is highly regarded internationally as a role model and consultant for modern stadium construction and operation. The stadium also serves as a living lab for developing innovative concepts for stadium management and event experience.

UNStudio’s masterplan for NFC - located on a 450,427 m2 site in Cheonan-shi, Chungnam-do – is based on the latest insights into sports science and data technology. The Centre will be an exceptional professional football facility housing two stadiums and over a dozen sports field typologies, natural running tracks and indoor gymnasiums. These facilities will be linked to the numerous specialist sports medics and treatment centres that will ensure that the athletes can perform at the top of their game. The complex also features a high-end hotel with a spa, sauna and wellness centre, and other exclusive facilities for the players, a public plaza located at the heart of the complex with a museum, an indoor and outdoor stadium, restaurants, shops and a variety of semi-public sports facilities.

Korean National Football Centre in Seoul

The NFC training facility will lead the way in sports innovation by focusing on ‘Health, Wellness, Science, and Technology’. For this reason, it will have over a dozen various sporting field typologies, natural running tracks, and indoor gymnasiums. Where possible, local natural materials of raw and exposed stone, timber, and textiles are employed, while an abundance of vegetation and green space is provided, thus embedding the campus into the surrounding landscape of farmland and hills sides.

Investing in the next generation of athletes, the NFC will become a training ground for all levels of athletes and will provide sports medicine scientists with the wide-ranging data they need to evaluate and customize different training regimens. The UNStudio team has specific knowledge of discretely integrating digital technology into the built environment for data collection related to the user’s health, activity, time and schedule allocation, in addition to other biometrics.