Archinect - News

Northwestern University’s Ryan Field stadium breaks ground

2024-08-07T18:02:00-04:00

Northwestern University’s athletics tradition is getting a new crown jewel thanks to HNTB and Perkins&Will’s design for the new Ryan Field Redevelopment project. Work on the venue, which promises to be "most accessible in college football," commenced with a groundbreaking ceremony early last month in Evanston, Illinois, and will yield a total of 35,000 seats plus outdoor plaza areas after an investment of $800 million. Existing ADA requirements will be "doubled," according to HNTB's project page.

Turner Construction is spearheading its construction and expects the stadium to be ready in time for the start of the 2026 season. Thornton Tomasetti is providing structural design and construction engineering services for the redevelopment, which is targeting a LEED Gold certification.

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Chicago Bears reverse suburban stadium plans, will remain at Soldier Field site under latest proposal

2024-03-13T11:49:00-04:00

On Monday morning, several Chicago news outlets reported that the Bears want to form a public-private partnership with the park district to build a stadium and renovate part of Chicago’s lakefront museum campus to add more public space. That would presumably include knocking down Soldier Field, which has the smallest seating capacity in the NFL, despite Chicago being the third-largest market.

The team still owns a 326-acre land plot in suburban Arlington Heights, where they first proposed a new Manica-led retractable roof design in March of 2022.

For now, the Bears' new Soldier Field proposal is expected to cost $2 billion. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said it was "a testament to Chicago’s economic vitality."

NBC Chicago reported that 80% of Chicagoans included in a recent survey would prefer an enclosed stadium at the Museum Campus, which would turn Soldier Field into a park space while retaining signature architectural elements such as its Doric colonnades.

Chicago's White Sox MLB franchise is also in the process of seeking public approvals for a new ballpark away from their traditional home on the Southside that would require a $9 billion investment.

Populous to design Beaver Stadium renovation for Penn State

2023-10-18T17:09:00-04:00

Populous has been named as the lead architect for a major renovation of the historic Beaver Stadium on the flagship campus of The Pennsylvania State University.

Barton Malow, AECOM Hunt, and Alexander Building Construction will join the project as construction managers, expanding on over 20 years of collaboration with Populous. The scope of the renovation entails winterizing the entire stadium for year-round use as an entertainment venue or the potential host of a college football playoff game. The western side of the stadium will also be reconstructed to include new executive suites and loge seating areas. Other renovations will be enacted in order to keep up with code upgrades and accessibility concerns. The reported cost of the project is $700 million.

The school emphasized its funding would be provided for entirely by the Athletics department, circumventing the need for tuition hikes. Construction is expected to begin in January of 2025 and conclude in time for the start of the ...

HOK enlisted by Jacksonville Jaguars to reimagine stadium

2023-06-08T13:05:00-04:00

HOK has announced that it is partnering with the Jacksonville Jaguars to undertake the renovation of TIAA Bank Field into the “Stadium of the Future.” The transformation seeks to invigorate the Jaguars franchise and spur the development of the city of Jacksonville.

Rendering courtesy of HOK

Work towards a long-term stadium solution began in July 2020 with a thorough engineering assessment of the current stadium. It was concluded that it was possible to address the stadium’s challenges through a renovation rather than new construction.

“From stadium discussions starting in 2016 to the formal process launched in July 2020 and now concluding, our objective has always been the same — lock in a promising future for the Jaguars and help our downtown become an economic engine to lift all of Jacksonville, particularly areas that have been underserved,” said Jaguars owner Shad Khan.

Rendering courtesy of HOK

HOK is joined by Impact Development and Management as the owner’s representative, al...

HOK and Arquitectonica will design a new football operations complex for the University of Miami

2023-01-17T11:54:00-05:00

HOK has announced plans for a new seven-story football operations center to be located at the heart of the University of Miami's campus in Coral Gables, Florida.

Working alongside local mainstays Arquitectonica, the pair will deliver a new 172,000-square-foot facility beset with amenities for student-athletes and connected to the school’s existing Carol Soffer Indoor practice field that was completed five years ago. The school is trying to market itself as an elite national powerhouse to recruits and will do so with the new performance-driven Hurricanes complex, which rivals others designed recently for its in-state rival Florida Gators, LSU, and the new national champion Georgia Bulldogs.

Image courtesy HOK

The first floor of the building will feature a public lobby, locker rooms, nutrition center, and dining hall. It will be followed by an “immersive digital experience” aimed at wooing prospective athletes on the second floor, while the next three contain a wellness center, spa, t...

Los Angeles Chargers break ground on new Gensler-designed HQ and training facility

2022-05-23T17:02:00-04:00

Less than eight months after announcing plans to establish its new practice facility and headquarters campus in El Segundo, a groundbreaking ceremony held this week marks the start of construction for the new home of the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers.

Last Wednesday’s groundbreaking marks a major milestone for the NFL franchise, which spent four years searching for a location for a permanent headquarters following its move from San Diego to Los Angeles. During this time the Chargers have been operating out of a temporary space in Costa Mesa.

this is groundbreaking content pic.twitter.com/RIpdtwKfI2
— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) May 23, 2022

The new Gensler Sports-designed complex will occupy a 14-acre site and span 145,000 square feet. It will feature offices, state-of-the-art medical facilities, three practice fields with seating for more than 5,000 spectators, strength and conditioning areas, a rooftop hospitality area, an esports venue, and more.

Previously on Archinect: The LA Chargers have tapped Gensler for a proposed new $100 million training facility

The campus is located roughly seven miles from the recently-opened So-Fi Stadium, which the Chargers occupy as co-tenants with the Los Angeles Rams. In March, real estat...

Construction update on L.A.'s new gigantic football stadium

2018-09-25T17:36:00-04:00

Get a bird's eye view of the new Inglewood Stadium with this 360-degree image, courtesy of architectural photographer Hunter Kerhart. The stadium, which is the centerpiece of a $5-billion redevelopment of the former Hollywood Park racetrack, will feature 70,000 seats when it opens in 2020. The HKS Architects-designed facility is expected to serve as the home of the Super Bowl in 2022, and will also play a prominent role in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.

urbanize.LA recently published new drone's-eye-view construction photos of the impressive $5 billion Hollywood Park site—soon to be home of the shiny new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers NFL stadium (designed by HKS Architects) and a sprawling mixed-use development with office buildings by Gensler (architect) and Studio-MLA (formerly Mia Lehrer + Associates, landscape architect), shopping & entertainment venues by BCV Architecture + Interiors (design architect), Architects Orange (executive architect), and Studio-MLA (landscape architect) as well as residential buildings planned by Hart Howerton (design architect) and TCA Architects (executive architect).

Estimated cost for L.A.'s football stadium project climbs to $5 billion

2018-03-28T14:19:00-04:00

The cost of Stan Kroenke's stadium in Inglewood is climbing [...]. Owners approved raising the debt waiver to $4.963 billion for the first phase of the project, which includes the football stadium where the Rams and Chargers will play, the neighboring 6,000-seat performance venue, the 200,000 square feet of office space for NFL Media, the parking lots surrounding the stadium, and the cost of the entire 300-acre parcel.

The price tag for the stadium itself was originally estimated at $2.6 billion but is now closer to $3 billion — eye-wateringly higher than the most expensive NFL venues to date: MetLife Stadium, the shared home of the New York Giants and Jets, and the Atlanta Falcons' Mercedes-Benz Stadium, both clocking in at 'only' $1.6 billion.

Zaha Hadid Architects to design new stadium for the Forest Green Rovers

2016-11-03T12:51:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has just won another major commission: the Forest Green Rovers football stadium in Stroud, UK. The announcement follows a seven month competition, with ZHA winning out over 50+ entries from around the world.

The stadium will be built almost entirely out of wood, which the Forest Green Rovers’ chairman, Dale Vince, asserts will make it have “the lowest embodied carbon of any stadium in the world”. Alongside a timber structure, roof, cantilevers and cladding, the stadium’s floor slab and seating terraces will be made of wood. According to the press release, the timber will be sourced sustainably.

“The stadium’s roof is covered with a transparent membrane, which contributes to turf growth, minimizes stark shadows for players and fans and reduces the volumetric impact of the stadium from distant views in the surrounding landscape,” states James Heverin, Director of ZHA.

“The stadium’s design incorporates the club’s future growth. Initially for 5,000 spectators, ...

The former-football stars tackling England's affordable housing shortage

2016-09-26T13:17:00-04:00

A year ago, former England captain Rio Ferdinand, West Ham United skipper Mark Noble and ex-Brighton striker Bobby Zamora [unveiled] their Legacy Foundation – a regeneration charity with a plan to build a series of social and privately rentable housing schemes, backed by private investors. The stars (all three of whom have played for West Ham) are coming back to present their first project, worth £400m, to build 1,300 homes on a 22-hectare site in a run-down area in Houghton Regis near Luton.

For more on housing-related issues in the UK, follow these links:

BIG unveils moat-encircled stadium design for D.C.

2016-03-16T20:26:00-04:00

“The one thing that everybody's sort of excited about is this idea that the stadium is designed as much for the tailgating, the pre-game, as for the game itself,” Ingels says in the 60 Minutes promo.

When sports fans think football, they think...moats? Although the proposed stadium for the still-offensively-named Washington Redskins hasn't officially found a site, team owner Dan Snyder is pushing for it to be located next to the Anacostia River, which would provide context for Ingels' moat, although this juxtaposition still leaves the purple moon unexplained.

More BIG news:

Are you ready for some (more) football? New renderings of Inglewood's impending stadium revealed

2016-01-29T13:29:00-05:00

Highlights include a detailed look at the stadium's swooping roof canopy, which was designed by HKS Architects. [...] When completed in 2019, the $2.66-billion venue will offer seating for up to 70,240 NFL fans, as well as standing-room capacity for over 100,000 people at larger events. [...] The stadium is one component of a much larger mixed-use complex that is being jointly developed by real estate firms Stockbridge Capital and Wilson Meany along with Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

Check out the video below for another look at "the NFL's biggest and most expensive venue, with a price tag well over $2 billion... the priciest sports venue in the nation's history" (Curbed LA) – aka, the new home for the recently-minted Los Angeles Rams (and potentially the San Diego Chargers as well). More renderings are perusable in the gallery below. Yay?

Are you ready for some more FOOTBALL?!?!?

Bjarke Ingels shouldn't be proud to have the Washington Redskins as a client, according to critic Philip Kennicott

2016-01-22T20:04:00-05:00

To understand how strange this pairing of client and architect is, you have to contemplate two things: the deeply embedded social progressivism that has become the standard worldview of international architectural firms such as BIG; and organizations such as the NFL, a private club for 1 percenters that bullies municipalities and treats its own players’ health with indifference. Can this marriage last? Is BIG motivated by naivete or cynicism?

WaPo's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott discusses the oddities of BIG's recent commission to design a new stadium for the Washington Redskins — and the team's problematic name is just the tip of the iceberg.

NFL football is officially returning to Los Angeles: gigantic new stadium might even be home to more than just one team

2016-01-13T13:34:00-05:00

After 21 years away, the NFL is coming back to Los Angeles. The winner after months of waiting and a busy day of voting and discussion among the NFL team owners in Houston was St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke [...]. The exciting twist is that the San Diego Chargers have the option to join the Rams in their huge, shiny stadium—which is poised to be the NFL's biggest and most expensive venue, with a price tag well over $2 billion. (It'd be the priciest sports venue in the nation's history, too.)

Previously in the Archinect news:

Is LA Finally Going to Get a Football Stadium?

2015-01-05T12:19:00-05:00

The owner of the St. Louis Rams plans to build an NFL stadium in Inglewood, which could pave the way for the league's return to Los Angeles...Owner Stan Kroenke, who bought 60 acres adjacent to the Forum a year ago, has joined forces with the owners of the 238-acre Hollywood Park site, Stockbridge Capital Group. They plan to add an 80,000-seat NFL stadium and 6,000-seat performance venue to the already-massive development of retail, office, hotel and residential space...

"The announcement is the latest in more than a dozen stadium proposals that have come and gone in the meandering, two-decade effort to bring an NFL franchise back to the nation's second-largest media market. But Kroenke's move marks the first time an existing team owner has controlled a local site large enough for a stadium and parking."

Architecture for Humanity-designed "Football for Hope" Centers give African youth a solid start

2014-07-17T21:07:00-04:00

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup just coming to a spectacular finale in Brazil, it's a perfect moment for Architecture for Humanity to announce the completion of 20 centers for 2010, a Football For Hope program and partnership legacy of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Launched in 2007 by FIFA and streetfootballworld as a social legacy initiative, the program was tasked to build 20 community centers across 15 African countries for the benefit of local organizations. The centers address education and public health issues, using soccer as a tool for social development.

Find more information about the Football for Hope Centers below.

Photo: Young children running on the pitch of the Khayelitsha Football for Hope Center, the first completed Football for Hope Center. Location: Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: A. Grips

"Football for Hope (FFH) was created to enhance dialogue and collaboration between locally active organizations advancing social development and football associations, committed...