THE Reebok Stadium has been praised in a top trade magazine - but Bolton is dubbed "depressed". Writing in The Architects' Journal, a university professor calls the £25 million stadium "revolutionary" and an "emblem of regeneration". But professor Brian Edwards, from the University of Huddersfield, said the area around the stadium was "an unspectacular place" and added that Wanderers' football team has been lacking in style for "years".

He said: "The Reebok Stadium forms a dramatic and optimistic edge to the largely depressed Bolton conurbation.

"Built on a former refuse tip, the stadium signals regeneration as effectively as any town centre facelift.

"This building, the first purpose-built stadium for a Premier League club, invites the highest skill of its players, and provides a spectacle in an unspectacular place.

"The Reebok Stadium gives Bolton the style its football team has not had in years."

Professor Edwards applauds the futuristic nature of the stadium but admits some folk don't like the look of it.

He said: "Some may feel uneasy about the exaggerated and almost Baroque structural frame, about the dominance of gesture over detail, or about the new public functions constructed so far from existing urban areas.

"But the Reebok is Britain's clearest statement to date of the stadium of the future.

"Bold and unrestrained structural expression gives the Reebok a presence which defies its relatively small size."

The design and technology professor said the stadium had a commanding presence in the surrounding area.

He said: "It is seen from many angles before it is entered.

"For several seconds it floats above fields alongside the M61.

"It can be glimpsed from the railway line sitting alongside oil-stained peat bogs, and rises above the lower roofs of Victorian Houses."

He said that going into the stadium was like entering "a scene out of Jurassic Park" because of its strutting steel columns.

The academic compares the Middlebrook Retail and Leisure Park next to the stadium with Bolton town centre.

He said: "Like all 'edge cities', this one defies the centre by way of contrast.

"Victorian Bolton is heavy, fractured and congested - 'edge' Bolton, as represented by this massive redevelopment, is spacious, elegant and prosperous."

"It landmarks the change in time.

"It signals the arrival of post-industrial Bolton."

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