When SoFi Stadium takes center stage on Sunday as the host of this year’s Super Bowl LVI, the eyes of an unprecedented number of viewers will be tuned in to see the skills of both architects and professional football players being put on display in what is taking shape to be the nation’s most dynamic team sports development. 

The new home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers was inaugurated during the 2020 season following a three-year construction effort and much older development plan that in the end awarded the community of Inglewood with a stadium that was previously slated for a Convention Center-adjacent site in Downtown LA ten miles further northeast. 

HKS was the architect in charge of the project with help from all-pro landscape designer Mia Lehrer of the Los Angeles-based Studio-MLA. 

Like so many of the players on the field, SoFi’s stats are rather impressive. The massive 3.1 million-square-foot monster is the biggest in the NFL and occupies the center of an almost 300-acre mixed-use development called Hollywood Park that is 3.5 times the total area of Disneyland and twice the size of Vatican City. 

It has a 2.5-acre open-air plaza located next to the stadium, with another 6,000-capacity concert venue tucked inside its canopy. The site also boasts a 450,000-square-foot office building and will grow to include 890,000 square feet of retail space, 4.5 million more square feet of office developments, 25 more acres of public parks, a hotel, and 2,500 residences that will make its existence a font of change and improvement in the community of 110,000. 

All that space allows for a bevy of amazing state-of-the-art technology and other architectural features. Among them, its giant 70,000-square-foot Samsung Infinity Screen takes the top billing with over 2 million pounds of LED lights suspended 122 feet above the playing surface of which it is 1.5 times the size. 

The 4K display hangs some 70 feet below the high-tech ECFE (or Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) roof canopy, which covers some 1.1 million square feet put together through its 309 individual smaller panels. This is strung together by a mechanical system which allows 46 different larger panels to open for ventilation and includes some 17.8 miles of cables. A special crane had to be used to install the feature, which came together over the span of a month with the help of 238 trucks and other transport pieces.

Members of the project team at HKS recently spoke at length about their design process in a press conference held at the stadium. Check out the video below for more information about the venue that is promised to be a winner this Sunday.