Why Can't American Stadiums Be Beautiful?

[M II A II R II K]

Why Can't American Stadiums Be Beautiful?


Oct 2, 2015

By KRISTON CAPPS

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/10/...utiful/408529/

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It goes without saying that there are financial reasons to question stadium giveaways. Across the U.S., sports venues have cost taxpayers more than $12 billion in the past 15 years alone. The return on the investment doesn’t come close to justifying these public expenditures. Leaders just can’t resist handing over huge purses to billionaire team owners.

- So why don’t any of them look like the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux? For a country with such a deep and abiding love for professional sports and lighting money on fire, the U.S. really isn’t in the business of building iconic sports arenas. Museums: Fine. Libraries: We’re golden. Those things are built to make the case for themselves and their cities. It’s different with stadiums.

- France’s latest soccer stadium, which opened to great fanfare in September, is the work of Herzog & de Meuron. It was designed with an eye toward Bordeaux’s landscape, according to the firm’s website, with heavy emphasis on elegance and “geometrical clarity.” At a glance, it looks like a juiced-up John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Herzog & de Meuron are what you would call elite architects. The firm is best known for projects such as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and 56 Leonard Street in New York.

- Europe is home to lots of ballparks and arenas by smaller firms that, for better or worse, push the boundaries of what stadium architecture can be. In the U.S., most sports venues are designed by one of a handful of giant specialty firms, namely Populous, HKS, HOK, AECOM, NBBJ, and a few others. While these are fine firms—great firms, even—stadium designs for American clients trend toward the conservative. And why wouldn’t they? There’s no question that Major League Baseball got stuck in a rut with retro-modern ballparks that all look and feel the same.

- Yet Americans do invest heavily in these stadiums, through enormous subsidies. The football stadiums are especially egregious, since they offer so few uses per year and require so many parking spaces (and to be Super Bowl–eligible requires still more parking). Maybe if fans and voters were buying something a little more precious and personal for the money—and not necessarily at any greater cost—then that purchase would be more permanent. Voters might feel more reluctant about parting with stadium simply because the team’s ownership decides that too much time has gone by without a move.

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The Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux (Herzog & de Meuron)

[xzmattzx]

Our stadiums can be and are beautiful. Look at our baseball stadiums. Citizens bank Park, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, and Marlins Park, among others, look great. They're not distinctively modern (maybe Marlins Park is), because baseball is about tradition.

The football stadiums are decent, too. AT&T Stadium in Texas and University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona are distinctive and interesting.

Our arenas are pretty nice now. The Sprint Center in Kansas City is nice. Up in Canada, by the way, the arenas under construction in Quebec City and Edmonton are contemporary and architecturally significant.

[RLS_rls]

^There we go with the tradition argument. Everything is traditional and still things move forward. For a country that dumps incredible amounts of resources in to all types and levels of sports, American stadiums are often boring and extremely conservative. What does tradition have to do with anything? The sports themselves are constantly being studied and researched, the materials used are always changing, the rules are tweaked, the athletes experiment with new methods, materials, chemicals. It's about competition, there's no advantage to being traditional or quaint.

I suspect stadium design was conservative on purpose so as not to jeopardize the funding channels that were being sought out from the government. Now that PPPs are the norm and these projects often include huge "public elements" or housing schemes, or other excuses, it isn't as necessary to fly under the radar, so to speak.

[mrnyc]

more city lab clik-bait?

the billion+$ cowboys and the jets/giants stadiums are as modern and nice as can be. and they both will likely be trumped by the new vikings stadium.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by RLS_rls

^There we go with the tradition argument. Everything is traditional and still things move forward. For a country that dumps incredible amounts of resources in to all types and levels of sports, American stadiums are often boring and extremely conservative. What does tradition have to do with anything? The sports themselves are constantly being studied and researched, the materials used are always changing, the rules are tweaked, the athletes experiment with new methods, materials, chemicals. It's about competition, there's no advantage to being traditional or quaint.

I suspect stadium design was conservative on purpose so as not to jeopardize the funding channels that were being sought out from the government. Now that PPPs are the norm and these projects often include huge "public elements" or housing schemes, or other excuses, it isn't as necessary to fly under the radar, so to speak.

What do you expect from baseball? Traditional is what the fans want. People love Fenway Park and Wrigley Field for a reason.

But that's just one sport (and that's assuming Marlins Park isn't dynamic). What about the football stadiums? AT&T Stadium, University of Phoenix Stadium, and US Bank Stadium (under construction) all are modern and distinctive.

And then what about arenas? The Sprint Center in Kansas City and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn are modern, and the arena in Las Vegas follows that trend. Canada is building two distinctive arenas in Edmonton and Quebec City.

By the way, despite the distinctive exterior, the interior of this soccer stadium is as bland as can be. You can find some thought put into the interior architecture in American stadiums and arenas because sightlines.

[ardecila]

It's also worth pointing out that not a lot of European stadiums have great architecture either. Most of them are very, very unadorned, ungraceful, and comparable to football stadiums in the US. A handful of unique French stadiums and Olympic remnants in Munich, Barcelona, London, Athens does not demonstrate a trend in European stadium architecture.

The only point of interest on most European stadiums is the canopy over the stands, which usually requires some pretty massive structure to support, unless the club decides to save money and put in columns. The rest is usually very basic and not at all graceful.

[mhays]

The example on top isn't terribly interesting, and probably looks far worse when it's not in the standard "lantern in twilight" setup.

With stadiums, the #1 key is to integrate well with the neighborhood, functionally and visually. That includes little or no surface parking.

On the aesthetics front, traditionalism done well can be awesome. Or even traditionalism with the workings of a giant movable roof, which gives Safeco Field an almost-steampunk look from some angles.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by mhays

The example on top isn't terribly interesting, and probably looks far worse when it's not in the standard "lantern in twilight" setup.

Your taste, but I find it nice looking indeed. Not only that, it's also designed to be easily enlarged if necessary. Capacity is of 42,115 in its soccer configuration for now.

These are the other latest noticeable to have more here and get a more accurate idea, if you will.

Allianz Riviera, Nice
Completed aug. 2011
€245 mi.
35,624 seats (soccer)





Stade Pierre Mauroy, Lille. That one's roof is movable.
Completed jul. 2012
€282 mi.
50,157 seats (soccer)






http://www.metronews.fr/lille/stade-...OrabnvLu44YDU/

Stade Vélodrome, Marseille
Renovated june 2014 (was 1st built in 1935)
€267 mi. (renovation cost)
67,394 seats (soccer)






http://www.cybevasion.fr/france/hote...ille_1347.html

Lyon is building a new stadium of 59,286 seats for themselves as well, it's currently U/C. Some renderings.







The Parc des Princes in Paris (roughly 48k seats) is expected to be renovated and slightly enlarged sometime soon, but I don't think it could ever go beyond 60k seats because of the périphérique freeway stuck to it.
There's also a 32k-seat rugby stadium U/C over the district of la Défense, that'll be significant to enhance it.

Are all these better designed than your average US stadium? I have no idea. Guess it's pretty much the same overall. Again that of Bordeaux is the most stylish of ours, I find.

[Steely Dan]

why is it that european soccer stadiums seem to almost always be 100% roofed over the seating areas?

in america, most stadiums have roofed seating areas mixed with open areas, and sometimes even no roofed areas at all (such as a lot of college football stadiums)

does it tend to rain a lot more in euorpe or something? do americans just like sunshine more? is it just a cultural difference that has evolved over time? what gives?

[mousquet]

^ I think that's mainly for the atmosphere in there. I swear. The noise fans make down to the field. Yelling barbarians sound louder when roofed.

[The North One]

Stadiums are mostly ugly by default, I don't think an attractive stadium has been built since Roman times.

[upnorthsox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

why is it that european soccer stadiums seem to almost always be 100% roofed over the seating areas?

in america, most stadiums have roofed seating areas mixed with open areas, and sometimes even no roofed areas at all (such as a lot of college football stadiums)

does it tend to rain a lot more in euorpe or something? do americans just like sunshine more? is it just a cultural difference that has evolved over time? what gives?

Fifa strongly suggests at least half the seats be in the shade to host a World Cup event

[mrnyc]

not an outdoor stadium, but barclays in brooklyn is already rather uniquely interesting looking as arenas go & its getting its green roof -- along with a bunch of apt bldgs




target center arena has a green roof too

these are such large structures - greening them up cant hurt & it looks good

[photoLith]

The new Vikings stadium looks absolutely incredible. I still think one of the coolest stadiums ever built was Beijings Water Cube for the 2008 Olympics.

[mrnyc]

^ yeah i was upclose and walking around the new vikings stadium construction last month. enormous doesnt even begin to describe it. its completely skyline changing for mpls too, which already has an impressive skyline, so that is saying something.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by mousquet

^ I think that's mainly for the atmosphere in there. I swear. The noise fans make down to the field. Yelling barbarians sound louder when roofed.

I don't think that claim can fly when the likes of Beaver Stadium (reportedly one of the most daunting places in the world to play due to crowd noise) doesn't have any roof at all...


psu.edu

That...thing...can seat a hundred thousand people, by the way.

[mousquet]

^ I can't tell whether any serious acoustics study was ever made on the topic, but some of the PA fan excitement might get lost to the sky in that stadium. That'd be too bad, right?

And of course the size of it helps. We don't have any that large in France where the largest is the Stade de France with some 80k seats. It's in greater Paris, but intended to host the games of the national rugby and soccer teams exclusively. No local team is supposed to play in there.

The largest arena in Europe is the "Nou Camp" of Barcelona. It's home to the FC Barcelona, one of the greatest soccer club ever.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by photoLith

The new Vikings stadium looks absolutely incredible. I still think one of the coolest stadiums ever built was Beijings Water Cube for the 2008 Olympics.

Granted. I just took a couple of seconds to watch some pictures, it looks pretty amazing.
But then we build 3 skyscrapers for the same price. Lol

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Granted. I just took a couple of seconds to watch some pictures, it looks pretty amazing.
But then we build 3 skyscrapers for the same price. Lol

oh lo lo. 3 skyscrapers, particularly as the french would define them, would fit very easily in that stadium.

which reminds me, people dont realize, but the port authority bldg aka the google bldg in chelsea is larger than the esb laid on its side.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

oh lo lo.

You're making so much fun of it that you'll soon be the last one on Earth to still use it.

Watch that one: hé hé hééé. Try that dang evil one in your proper nasty, disgusting tone. You'll love it, it fits your penis.