Bricks aside, I wonder how they'll fund it.
Indeed I'm very curious as to what the budget is, because largely there are three things that the Glazerlings can do based on our finances and their past behavior/tendency kind of sort of along the lines of their not having any actual money of their own to put into the club: (keep in mind, this is all from a filthy overseas fan who's never been within 140 miles of Old Trafford)
1. Interior facelift (replacing all the seating, redoing restrooms, public facing areas etc) + cursory studies into South Stand 150-180m (cursory studies roughly being '
draw me some pretty ideas')
2. Facelift + serious studies into South Stand 180-230m (serious studies meaning choosing a design, doing all the surveying work, figuring out all the legal issues, etc. just not actually building said chosen design)
3a. Facelift + construction of bridging/support element over railway 250-270m (there are reasons to do this without building the stands above it, but only if you're 100% sure that one day you're going to build said stands)
3b. Facelift + construction of stands over railway, either with temporary or permanent bridging/support element 300-400m
Something like 3a and 3b would be part of a long term comprehensive scheme to update the rest of the stadium and the surrounding area, and 3b isn't the greatest idea - if you're going to go that far, then you kind of want to do the whole thing, although you could do some interesting things just with this depending on how much of the railway (lengthwise) you end up building over.
Again, all of that is taking into account that they're almost certainly not going to spend much more than 300m of the club's money.
How would you modernise Old Trafford?
Assuming a complete overhaul and a normal budget for a project of that size, well.
(if you're good at something, never do it for free...)
That being said, I'd reskin and build over the railway and do some very pretty things around that part of the complex and perhaps towards the river then win some awards and then thank you in my speech.
How about you? Would you really not mind an ultra-modern design aesthetic - new Bernabeu, Allianz Arena, etc - at OT? (Tottenham Stadium's exterior is a bit of a middling and heavily derivative disaster.) And how much of the club's workman's roots do you think you'd like to see reflected in the materials and design?
Also, the New Bernabeu's design is heavily aided ('informed' is the word they like to use) by its site: they're putting social/retail/multipurpose spaces in between the old and new building skin with views out into the city, whereas at OT you'd just be looking out at industrial areas and rows of spinsters' laundry lines from a lot of such spaces.