20/20 works on Club Level areas for Arsenal

The Club Level improvements will see the Woolwich Suite split into a buffet restaurant, a bar area, a lounge space and a 252-seat à la carte restaurant called the WM Club. 20/20 creative director Jon Lee says, ’The club level area has felt like a corporate area since it was built in 2006 and the spaces have never been utilised properly. The club want to turn it into a premium offer for fans.’

The consultancy introduced a pervasive theme based around Herbert Chapman and Arsène Wenger – the club’s two most successful managers – using hanging chain mail impressions of them to divide the buffet and à la carte spaces.

’The chain links are coloured so they make up pixels,’ says Lee. The WM Club will use graphic applications, which Lee says are restrained iterations of the self-referential ’Arsenalisation’ brand strategy being rolled out across the stadium.

Past and present images of players’ eyes have been integrated into the design to create ’menacing but subtle branding which fits into the natural environment’, he says. The eye images will depict past and present players which face each other on stainless-steel mounts in booths across the space, paired by player position.

Past and present is another thematic subtext throughout the refurbished Club Level, according to Lee, who says traditional and modern materials have been combined where possible. Tom Dixon chairs have been sourced by Viaduct with herringbone upholstery referencing player’s flat-caps from the early 20th century.

Timber panelling has been applied and booth seating installed in buffet area The Foundry, using Tom Dixon copper lights that cluster over an adjoining stairwell to suggest cannon balls, referencing the club’s history as an armoury. In addition, the Legends Bar, one of four corner bars around the ground, has been redesigned by 20/20 as a multiscreen sports bar.

Portraits of past players commissioned from graphic artist Tavis Coburn will hang on powdercoated aluminium mounts, and a ’Roy of The Rovers’-style graphic story will wrap around the bar and food areas, says Lee, who hopes to redesign the other three corner bars.