American sports broadcaster Fox Sports' coverage of two of football's biggest tournaments — the Euros and Copa América — is set in a Kiwi-designed virtual studio believed to be the largest ever built.
Dubbed the "basilica of soccer" and inspired by cathedrals and palaces, all of the network's coverage of the simultaneous tournaments is hosted within the 1.3-acre space.
Architecture van Brandenburg, a Dunedin-based studio, have previously designed some impressive buildings, with the enormous digital environment their first-ever virtual design.
The small team of six worked as if they were physically building the set from scratch, said designer Damien van Brandenburg.
"We had to consider every aspect to make it convincingly genuine. Consider all the lighting details, the air conditioning. We even did a fire escape run because we had to make it seem genuine as a building."
Fellow Dunedinite Sir Ian Taylor put the firm onto their big break during a visit by Fox Sports executive Zac Fields while the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup was on.
"While he was here, I said, 'You should come and have a look at my friend Damien, they do this incredible architecture'. He came over, had a look at all this stuff and then went away.
"I could see there was a thought bubbling in his mind."
That thought fermented into a concrete proposal, with an impressed Fields taking the idea back to California.
"We were thinking there might be some drawings. Well, there ended up being about 12 different takes on an environment, so right away we knew the quality of work that could be done with them," Fields said.
It's likely to be the first of many produced by van Brandenburg and his team, he said.
"If we do another one, we actually know what we're getting from each other and know how things work.
"I think it only gets better."
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