Rome, June 4 - Construction is set to begin later this year on a new stadium for soccer club AS Roma that will include three towers in an adjacent to be designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, according to media reports Wednesday.

The stadium seating up to 52,000 spectators will be constructed in the city's southern Tor di Valle neighbourhood and include a Rome Village commercial area designed by Polish-born Libeskind, stadium architect Dan Meis told Bloomberg.

Libeskind is famous for such designs as the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and reconstruction of the World Trade Centre in New York City, destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Meis said that construction of the commercial centre, anchored by stores including Nike as well as restaurants, bars, and conference facilities, will take a bit longer than normal to complete because of its various uses.

"Usually, it takes a year to design a structure like this and then about two years to build, but in this case, the process is a little longer due to the (size of the project)," he said. Meis's stadium, budgeted at about 300 million euros for construction, is scheduled to be ready for AS Roma's 2016-2017 season.

The American-controlled club can then leave Stadio Olimpico where Rome's other team, Lazio, will continue to play.

The new facility is flexible enough that it can be used for concerts and other events in addition to soccer, Meis said.

One particular problem engineers must deal with is groundwater on the site, which is near Rome's Tiber river, meaning the stadium will be raised onto a kind of "podium", said Meis.

The stadium will include a section called the Curva Sud, of South Stand, for ultra fans who "live in another world without laws," Meis told Bloomberg.

At present, hard-core ultra fans stand throughout games.

He said that fans have flooded him with emails with suggestions, leading him to joke that he considered doing away with seats entirely, since most stand throughout a soccer match.

"They don't like to sit down. We could have just dispensed with seats," said Meis. "There's also a fun special effect: Before the game, a hydraulic lift will bring the players up like gladiators," added Meis.

James Pallotta, a member of the Boston consortium that made AS Roma Serie A's first foreign-controlled club in 2011, has said the new stadium "will be ultra-modern and amazing".

When the new plan for the wood-and-steel structure was unveiled in March, it was not a hit with everyone.

Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas called it "horrendous", "ugly", and "of bad taste".

Meis responded that "any architect would be jealous because they would have liked to create Roma's stadium".