Valle Cornejo Arquitectos Crowns Concepción's 1962 Collao Stadium with a Continuous Ring of Steel and Membrane

Locals have called it Collao since the Estadio Municipal de Concepción opened on 16 September 1962. The stadium sits on Avenida Collao, on land the city expropriated in 1957, and was designed by Mario Recordón and Augusto Gómez. Between 2013 and 2015, Valle Cornejo Arquitectos led its modernization. The project was reported to cost around CLP 33 billion and covers roughly 30,000 m². The result, now named after former mayor Ester Roa Rebolledo, is the third-largest stadium in Chile, with sources putting capacity at between 30,000 and 33,000.

Most stadium renovations of this scale either demolish or hide the old structure behind a new skin. What interests us here is that the architects do neither. The drawings show a stepped concrete bowl that still organizes everything. A new structural ring of tubular steel trusses rises behind it and cantilevers a membrane roof over the seats. The athletics track stays, which keeps the pitch at a distance from the crowd. The design does not deny that compromise. It reframes the old municipal arena as a civic object with a legible edge on the street.

A Roof That Reads as One Gesture

The roof is the project's thesis. White steel trusses curve around the oval and carry a tensile membrane that stops short of the pitch, so the field stays open to the sky. Seen from below, the trusses read as a single repeated rib. You get a clear rhythm instead of the cluttered look of steel added piece by piece.

The video screen and the dark glazed boxes hang beneath this frame without competing with it. That restraint matters. A roof that has to absorb screens, lighting and press functions can easily turn into a services rack, and this one does not.

A Facade of Panels on Lattice Brackets

From the outside, the old bowl disappears behind white panels held off the structure by lattice steel brackets. The close-ups show the panels hung rather than bonded, so the screen and the support remain two distinct layers. Along the perimeter, a row of white columns and triangular membrane pieces sets a cadence that matches the roof ribs overhead.

This kind of layering suits a renovation. The skin unifies decades of irregular additions without pretending the building is new, and it gives a municipal stadium a single, recognizable silhouette against Concepción's pines and hills.

Arrival as Civic Space

The forecourt treats arrival as a public occasion. A paved plaza lined with flagpoles leads to the curved canopy, and the illuminated lettering over the gates makes the entrance legible at dusk. At the ticket office, two mature trees shade a modest frontage with a yellow band. The large structure meets people at the scale of a window and a queue.

Yellow recurs across gates, signage and seats as a wayfinding thread. It is a simple device, and on a building this large it does more than any amount of graphics could.

Beneath the Stands

The concourses are where you can see how the renovation is built. The sloping concrete supports of the bowl are left visible, set against a yellow panel wall and a black-clad volume. An elevated walkway with mesh railings and slim steel columns threads beneath, and the contrast between heavy and light structure is easy to read.

These spaces are generous in daylight and visually porous, which matters on match days. People can orient themselves, and the old structure becomes part of the experience rather than something to cover up.

Color, Seats and the Press Line

The seating mixes blue and yellow in patterned fields, with crest badges molded into individual seats. Across a crowd of tens of thousands, the pattern breaks up the mass of the tiers and still looks complete when the stands are half empty. That is a practical concern for a municipal venue that will not sell out every week.

The glazed press and hospitality boxes cut into the rake as a continuous horizontal band. Placing them in the bowl, rather than stacking them in a separate tower, keeps the oval's profile intact.

The Pitch, the Track and the Hill

The 105 × 68 m grass pitch is still ringed by a red Polytan running track. The fisheye view from the upper seats makes the cost of that clear, because the distance between fans and play is real. The architects respond by pulling the roof edge inward. The canopy defines the bowl's interior and helps make the space feel more enclosed than its plan would suggest.

The roof also stops low enough to frame the wooded, often mist-covered hill beyond. Concepción's landscape becomes the backdrop to every match. We read this as a deliberate choice: it keeps the stadium rooted in its place rather than sealed off as a generic arena.

Plans and Drawings

The plans, from the lowest level up through the mezzanine, VIP and press levels, show a disciplined oval. Service rooms wrap the base, with green zones marking the landscaped outer edge. Hospitality and press space concentrate in a block on one side, so the rest of the ring can stay continuous seating. The west elevation shows branching columns and a central crest panel on the main facade.

The sections are the most telling set. Each one shows the stepped concrete stand with a tall tubular truss rising behind it and the roof cantilevering forward. Where the glazed box level cuts into the rake, and where the rear circulation block stacks up, the drawings make the hierarchy plain: the bowl carries the people and the steel carries the sky.

The sketches show the intent before the engineering. One shows a continuous roof ring held on angled struts. The other shows crowds gathered on a forecourt beneath slanted columns, the same civic arrival the finished building delivers.

Why This Project Matters

Latin American cities are full of mid-century municipal stadiums that are too big to demolish and too dated to keep as they are. Collao offers a workable model. It keeps the bowl and the athletics track, adds a structurally independent roof ring and screen, and gives the building a public front. The project accepts the limits of its inheritance and still produces a coherent, contemporary object.

Its strongest lesson is about legibility. Old concrete, new steel, membrane and panel each do one job and stay visibly distinct. That clarity makes the renovation easy to understand, easier to maintain, and honest about the six decades of history built into the site.

Ester Roa Rebolledo Municipal Stadium by Valle Cornejo Arquitectos, renovation of the original 1962 stadium by Mario Recordón and Augusto Gómez. Concepción, Chile. 30,000 m². Completed 2015. Photographs by Pablo Altikes and Pablo Arriagada.

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