"I knew nothing about football" says Eduardo Souto de Moura on designing Braga stadium

Architect Eduardo Souto de Moura reveals he had no knowledge of football or stadium design when he was invited to design the Braga Municipal Stadium, Portugal, in the second video in a series produced by Dezeen.

Souto de Moura explained that he was invited to design the stadium for the UEFA Euro 2004 championship, despite having no prior experience of designing sports venues.

"I can say it was the project I most enjoyed working on," he said in the video. "When I was awarded the stadium, I knew nothing about football nor stadiums. But this is normal in architecture."

The commission arose after the Braga municipality approached architects Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava, but ultimately turned to Souto de Moura due to their higher fees.

"The Braga municipality had invited Foster and Calatrava but found their fees too high," Souto de Moura said. "Then they asked me if I wanted to do it, and of course, my fees are lower."

Despite having no experience with stadium design, the architect spent a month attending matches to study how they function, focusing on circulation, entrances and exits.

However, it was the site itself – a valley containing a disused quarry – that became the defining element of the design.

After climbing the quarry to photograph it, Souto de Moura decided to carve the stone further to create a structure that would emerge directly from the landscape.

"I liked the quarry so much that I thought that if I continued to cut the stone all the way to the bottom, it would create something like a Roman theatre," he said.

One half of the stadium was formed directly from the excavated rock, while the other was constructed in reinforced concrete using material from the site.

"With that part of stone, I would have half a stadium and I would make the other half almost symmetrically in reinforced concrete," Souto de Moura explained.

The resulting design departed from conventional enclosed bowl structures and instead featured two opposing stands and open sides, a configuration that Souto de Moura argues better reflects the lateral movement of football.

"Football is played from left to right and right to left," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me for the stands to be behind the goalposts."

This created informal viewing points from the surrounding landscape, enabling views into the stadium from the open sides, although the architect noted that this was an unintended consequence of the design.

The stadium is also defined by its cable-suspended roof, a solution informed by Souto de Moura's earlier collaboration with architect Álvaro Siza on the Portuguese Pavilion.

To preserve the appearance of a lightweight structure, Souto de Moura avoided using visible downpipes, instead subtly inclining the roof to channel rainwater into a gutter system. The collected water is then reused to irrigate the pitch.

"If I made two downpipes, they would look like pillars and it wouldn't look like the roof was suspended by cables," he said. "It would destroy the idea of the stadium."

Completed for the Euro 2004 tournament, the Braga Municipal Stadium remains one of Souto de Moura's most celebrated works.

In the video, he reflects on the project as a rare combination of constraint, landscape and invention, emphasising its enduring significance in his career.

"I found the result very satisfactory," he said. "It continues to be the project I've most enjoyed working on."

The video is the second in an exclusive series produced by Dezeen, with the first instalment featuring Souto de Moura reflecting on the accidental beginnings of his architecture career.

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