Herzog & de Meuron

Allianz Arena

The new Allianz Arena football stadium in Munich, designed by Herzog and De Meuron, is a quite beautiful piece of work, which puts Norman Foster's compromised new Wembley to shame on several fronts. For a start, it's come in on time and on budget (for a quarter that of Wembley, actually), but also features innovations such as cashless payment, is acoustically brilliant, and its distinctive appearance has already been taken to heart by locals, who have dubbed it 'the rubber dinghy.