Melbourne Rectangular Stadium (City of Melbourne, Victoria)

 stadium, football / soccer stadium

The Melbourne Rectangular Stadium is an outdoor sports stadium located on the site of Edwin Flack Field in the Sports and Entertainment District in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its major tenants are the Melbourne Storm of the NRL, the Melbourne Rebels of the Super Rugby, and the Melbourne Heart and the Melbourne Victory of the A-League. It is Melbourne's first large purpose-built rectangular stadium. The stadium was designed by Cox Architects and Planners.

The reason for the stadium's construction was that Melbourne lacked a stadium that was purpose-built for football codes with a rectangular playing field. Olympic Park Stadium, the city's main "rectangular" venue, could only hold 18,500 spectators, with only 18,500 seated, and it was also unsuitably configured due to its playing field being surrounded by an athletics track. The stadium project was announced in April 2006. The stadium was constructed from late 2007 to May 2010 at a cost of AU$268,000,000. Its commercial name was announced as AAMI Park in March 2010.

The rectangular stadium features a distinctive "Bioframe" design with a geodesic dome-like roof covering much of the seating area, while still allowing light through to the pitch. The northern and southern sides of the stadium are named the Olympic Side and the Yarra Side, respectively. Its exterior is also covered in thousands of LED lights which can be programmed to display a variety of patterns and images. It includes training facilities for the Melbourne Storm, the Melbourne Victory, the Melbourne Football Club, the Victorian Rugby Union, the Victorian Olympic Council, Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre, and Tennis Victoria. The Stadium is being used by the Melbourne Football Club as their administration headquarters. It also has public bars and cafes, 24 corporate boxes, a dining room with a capacity of 1,000, a gym, and a lap pool.

The Rectangular Stadium has an all-seated capacity of 30,050. Temporary stands are erected behind the goals during soccer matches and are removed for rugby matches so as to allow space for the in-goal area. It was designed with foundations to support a capacity increase to 50,000, though the roof was not designed with this in mind, so the stadium cannot be expanded without any major construction works.