March 14, 2006
Stadium Design Revealed
As anticipated, the design for the new Nationals stadium has been released this morning. The Post has the story and four views of the proposed design, put together by architecture firms Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum Sport and Devrouax & Purnell. We'll refrain from comment just now, but do check out the views, the Post story, and tell us what you think.
Stadium view from HOK Sport and Devrouax and Paul, via the Washington Post.
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It's OK, but too bad the limestone was replaced by concrete as a cost-cutting measure. I would have preferred a traditional brick ballpark instead of a modern design, but if you're going to do modern, you have to use first-class materials which age gracefully. I don;t understand why there was no public input on the design of the stadium. Everyone I know prefers a Camden Yards-like traditional design.
I dont think this design looks amazing or anything, but i certainly think it's more interesting than another brick throwback ballpark.
Initial reactions:
- I think the Southeast perspective is the most distinct and promising view.
- Would have been very interesting to see it in limestone and glass instead of concrete (the Post says limestone was scrapped for cost reasons).
- Having see ball games in probably a half dozen HOK Sport stadiums, I think the strength of their designs is not easily communicated in aerial views, but rather in the user's experience. Strong examples: the Eutaw street entrance at Camden, and the perfect framing of the Houston skyline over the 3rd baseline at Minute Maid Park.
- This park does look truly unique from other HOK designs, evoking neighther the Texas/Baltimore/Cleavland retro look, or the green steel/glass/brick designs of Houston/Milwaukee.
Looking forward to seeing more.
I am hoping the owners are chosen soon so as to
1) Eliminate or move the parking in the left field corner
2) restore limestone/add distinction
It is an acceptable design, but it could be so much more, if a new owner is willing to kick in some scratch...
It's wonderful because it will be in our city and our team will be playing in it.
Yea too bad there is no limestone and the parking is above ground. Hardly inspiring archietecture. Dull, but hard to hate.
www.dcbubble.blogspot.com
I like the entry ave within the stadium, but I agree, that parking over in left field isn't my favorite thing in the world.
I think I would like something a little more traditional...I like the design, but is it something that will stand the test of time? I also agree that the limestone should have stayed...I think the concrete will look a bit too industrial.
I am pretty sure there will be changes and maybe when I see it completed I will have a different opinion.
This looks amazing...it's also important that it complements and adds to the neighborhood with the year-round amenities. And who needs another throwback stadium? Our city should try to lead the nation rather than jump on the bandwagon of a 15-year old trend. As for the experience, I think HOK does most of the stadium programming, but the local architect does the actual design work, which is why the designs vary so much.
The effort to put air under the seats to recreate the RFK stands' ability to shake and bounce is pitiful. If you want that, stay at RFK. Let the new ballpark develop its own ambience and tradition. It should happen by chance, not be forced on the stadium.
My thoughts are on my blog, but my biggest fear is that it'd be yet another brick throwback park. I think I like it. Sounds like the parking structures will be lowered (if you read the Post's captions) for other stuff to be put on top.
For me, it's all about what it's like once I get there, buy a beer and a hot dog and hear the crack of the bat.
HOK makes really good baseball parks. I've been to several and they are uniformly terrific places to see a game. Going to games in this park will be wonderful.
What happened to South Capitol Street in the renderings? Right now it's a busy highway. In the renderings it looks small. That seems inaccurate.
This website provides some really good descriptions of the HOK renderings along with pictures of the area today. (Full disclosure: It's not my website and I don't know anything about the author.)
Oops. The website didn't appear in the text of my post. Click below to check it out.
Any idea what the view from home plate would be? Seems no one wants "another throwback" stadium, but would you rather have another RFK? I'd prefer the intimacy of Camden or PNC, even if it means "another throwback" stadium.
I don't think this geographic aspect has been brought up in any discourse concerning the stadium's placement, but anyone who has been to the outdoor dance floor at Nation and has looked towards the Capitol might remember that the steam from the Capitol Power Plant obstructs the view of the Capitol dome. Located at the intersection of E St. SE & New Jersey Ave (coordinates: 38.882713, -77.007641) the Capitol Power Plant has been operational since 1910 and will no doubt be pumping out steam for years to come. So when the stadium is finally complete, and baseball games begin at the new stadium, DC residents will continue to have an obstructed view of what it is to be represented in America.
They didn't include the most important view... looking down on the field from the cheap seats. Are we talking nose bleed?
Sara, most of the upper deck seats will be pretty high because there are two sets of sky boxes. The right field upper deck will be a little lower because it's on top of just one set of skyboxes.
On the bright side, the altitude in the upper deck will decrease the amount of beer you'll have to drink at the game, thereby saving you hundreds of dollars over the season.
I think the drawings look ok, not spectacular, but standard. Obviously a lot will be changed by Opening Day, and the final complex will likely be significantly different than these drawings. Judging from what is here though, it looks like a regular modern ballpark (aka - holes in unique places, tons and tons of luxury boxes).
The thing about this is, so much of what makes a good ballpark is stuff that you could never discern from artist sketches. A great example of this the comment about the upper deck - will it be too steep, what will the view be like? Also ask: Will the food be good? Will they staff enough vendors? How will they manipulate public transportation to make traveling to games easy? What will the atmosphere be like? Will the stadium get loud?
So I guess my opinion on the new stadium is: meh. If it will be a great stadium, it will be for reasons that you can’t see on an artist sketch. The design isn’t anything spectacular or unique, it’s just standard.
What I don’t get is why people are adverse to the throwback stadium movement. Are you all high? What is a better alternative? Cookie-cutter stadiums of the 60’s & 70’s? Before throwback parks became the norm, baseball stadium design was stuck in the dark ages. Did anyone visit the new-Comiskey Park before US Cellular bought the naming rights and rebuilt the upper deck? It sucked.
Don’t knock throwback stadiums - they constitute the best baseball stadiums out there. Would you rather watch a game in a bland concrete bowl, a decrepit pile of brick that smells of mildew, or a recently built throwback park? Let me tell you, Fenway, Wrigley, etc. - they suck as practical baseball stadiums. The concourses are cramped, the seats are tight, getting seats with a good sightline can be impossible, and you could be hurt by a falling piece of concrete (I’m looking at you Wrigley). So why are people railing against throwback stadiums? I think the essential question here is: are you for or against progress?
jose: Progress equals going back in time?
rizzle:
I have to agree with Jose. It is not really going back in time...it is honoring a classic. Classics don't die. The little black dress for instance. It is a staple in almost every woman's wardrobe. It has been for many years. Sure there are different ways of wearing it, but the idea is the same. I am pretty sure that there will be many more generations of girls that will have a little black dress. As I am sure there are going to be people 75 years from now enjoying a game in the throwback statdiums.
"jose: Progress equals going back in time?"
I think what he meant was that the ugly, concrete-clad multipurpose arenas of the 60s and 70s were an aberration in stadium design. It was a failed experiment, just like all of the other failed, hideous "Brutalist" architecture of the time (FBI Building, highrise housing projects, HUD, etc). The design for the Nats ballpark is a throwback to that era, and is just as derivative and un-original as Camden Yards was. So, why not go with "good" derivative instead of "bad" derivative? If you want something that's uniquely Washington, why not a neoclassical design using stone instead of brick? I don't mind something unique to our area, but why did they have to look to K Street modernist office boxes for inspiration?! Gaak!
PS Could we please stop callilng classic ballpark design "throwback" stadiums? They are no less throwbacks than anything else short of a hovering spherical blob or an upside-down arena... I mean, a good stadium can trace its lineage all the way back to the Colosseum in Rome...
Fairly extensive design critique over at BeyondDC...
http://beyonddc.com/log/?p=18
Here is an extensive blog about the area surrounding the ballpark, as well as the Douglas Bridge rebuild...
http://www.jdland.com/dc/
This is more of a general stadium question than a specific commentary on this particular design, but I want to know if it's possible to move upper decks closer in to the field without using beam supports a la Fenway and old Tiger Stadium. I'm all for maximizing revenue through luxury boxes, etc., but the noise and the fans are in the cheap seats, and they ought to be rewarded with a better view. Can anyone enlighten me as to whether or not engineering progress could allow such a structure?
My objection to the "old throwback" thing is that they all seem to be made out of red brick and so they all end up looking the same. They're not quite to the level of Mike Brady's design in that spoof Brady Bunch movie (where everything, even a car wash, looked like their house). But I think they look less classic than they do like an early to mid-'90s version of classic.
"Classic" was a style in the middle of the last decade, and I think that 20 years down the line -- if they're not torn down in another round of "build us a new stadium or we'll move" fights -- those stadia will look as dated as flannel shirts on Eddie Vedder.
The reason Fenway and Wrigley are so special is because of history, not because they're the best places to watch baseball or not get hit on the head by falling concrete. But the push to try to create that environment artificially hasn't really worked. It's the Disney-ification of baseball, rather than baseball. We end up with an analog of a stadium, not a real stadium.
I can't tell from the drawing, but it remains to be seen whether this one will pull it off. And Jose's point is very true -- we'll just have to wait and see for a lot of these things.
The great thing about the modern throwback stadiums is that they feel very intimate in a way that the "cookie cutter" stadiums of the 70s and 80s do not. (Ironically, those cookie cutter stadiums are now quite unique among MLB parks - see e.g. Kauffman Stadium and Shea Stadium - nothing like them now. But I divigate.] However, the intimacy was not achieved by using brick or other construction materials, but rather in the way that seating and views were designed.
That is to say, there is nothing inherently intimate about using brick, or looking old. Yankee Stadium is old as dirt and there is nothing remotely intimate about it (indeed, it is a great stadium for it's sense of scale, even majesty). Conversely, SafeCo field for example feels very intimate (cozy, even - moreso than any other park I've been in) and yet it is also thoroughly modern (despite the use of brick).
The retro move in stadiums was very much a reaction not only to the look of the cookie cutter stadiums, but to the *feel* of them as well. Now that we've conquered the feel problem -- with the use of "seating neighborhoods," viewing platforms, etc. -- I think we can move beyond the contruction materials that accompanied them (ie red brick).
Simply put, on to the next.
1. what the hell happened to the South Capitol Bridge? you know, the one that is THERE now?
2. agree on the Power Plant mentioned earlier.
that baby aint gonna disappear for a long time.
hard to hate the stadium. but ignoring the realities of the environment is STUPID.
First thing I noticed about the pictures was that the upper deck (where the most affordable seats will be and where the meat and potatoes fans will sit) looks really small. I guess they want to maximize profit by putting in two levels of "special seats" (club seats, skyboxes, whatever), and lots of first level seating. My first thought was, "boy its going to be expensive to go to games there, because most of the seats are going to be priced pretty high".
So unless your law firm or lobbying firm has season tickets, start saving your pennies now, because most seats are gonna cost a bundle.
cool video of the stadium at
www.dcbubble.blogspot.com
I too would prefer a limestone-foundation stadium, but from the pictures, it looks like most of the outside surfaces will be glass panels - which should look nice if kept clean. I especially like the jutting edge in the Southwest view of the stadium. No cookie-cutter design used for this stadium!
"First thing I noticed about the pictures was that the upper deck (where the most affordable seats will be and where the meat and potatoes fans will sit) looks really small."
Give me a small fucking break. There are any number of ways to criticize the stadium (or the stadium deal, which is what I suspect this is really about), but this comment is so deliberately petty it's laughable. Really, that's the first thing you noticed is that the upper deck "looks really small"? Spend a lot of time looking at stadium diagrams, do you? Not that stadium size has much to do with ticket prices anyway. Some of the smallest parks are the most affordable, and the biggest the most expensive. And there are alot of modern parks where my favorite seats are under 15 bucks.
At the end of the day, a baseball game in DC is going to be way more affordable that a Wizards game, a Redskins game, or a night at the Kennedy Center.
Well, the other positive thing about what modernists call "retro" or "throwback" stadiums, and I call classic ballpark design, is that the brick construction and more ornate metalwork, seats, a bit of sculpture, an old-timey clock and scoreboard have a HUMAN quality that both is soothingly nostalgic, and evokes a time before steroids, labor disputes, and the Dodgers moved to LA.
What does concrete and glass remind me of? A hard-edged, non-human structure with little or no ornament or style, or evocation of tradition. Baseball is a tradition-steeped sport. This soulless stadium may be fitting for an Olympic venue or an XFL game, but not baseball. What would Doris Kearns Goodwin say?
And even if the facade is mostly glass instead of concrete, what does that sound like? A K Street office building. Not a place I want to be reminded of at the game - a place I'm there to forget! What makes Yankee Stadium great is those classic little arches around the upper deck (ornamentation for the sake of ornament) and the monuments and sculpture present. I'll take a stone facade over brick if it's done in a tasteful classical style. What's more "Washington" in style than classical columns, pilasters, arches and pediments? Something along the lines of that wonderful terminal at National Airport, classical forms in modern materials, with artwork and ornamentation in abundance would have been nice.
Not cookie cutter? This is totally cookie cutter, just not for baseball fields. This looks like the convention center, which looks like every museum and office building built in the last 20-30 years. Sometimes they're good (East Wing NGA) often they're not really good.
So basically, we've got a unoriginal idea being shoehorned into the baseball context in an attempt to be original. Personally I see no reason to totally reject the retro idea in an attempt to break from the pack. The best stadiums built during this period distinguished themselves not by choosing new building materials or using more glass. We can be true to the tradition and still be original.
So we had 80 years of "the same thing". Then we started building multi-purpose soulless "same things" until HOK started making "the same thing" that had been made for 80 years before the abberation of the RFKs, and people loved them. Now people think it's too much "the same" so we're taking watered down modernist design. Geez.
I'd maybe support it if it were going to be as well executed as the East Wing, but clearly it's already a compromised idea. This city is full of compromised modernist ideas, none as shamefully ugly as the FBI building. If it's clear we're already closer to the FBI building than the East Wing, maybe its early enough to stop this mistake now.
I could care less what Doris Kearns Goodwin could say. We've had enough of those damn Ivy League PBS Brooklyn Dodgers-Boston Red Sox pseudo-intellectuals.
I'm not 100% in love with the design, but am sure it can be improved from drawing to reality. I simply hope this will be a fan-friendly facility, along the lines of the new ballpark in Philadelphia, with wide concourses, cup holders, and good game views from your seat.
Beautiful! Another gorgeous toilet seat with the classic lines of RFK stadium or MLK library. This certainly won't look out-of-date by 2008. And when the team goes to Puerrto rico, this can be easily changed innto a mega mall. Look, the Bed bath and beyond would go perfectly in left field.
$800 mil doesn't buy what it used to.
Absolutely boring and uninspiring. Typical Washington. What a shame. Such a promising opportunity cheaped out.
why dont all you Idaho transplants that claim to be native New Yorkers SHUT THE FUCK UP! we getting a new ballpark in DC that will be the best in MLB and everybody is ust jealous. plus Im betting all the people with negative comments weren't baseball stadium supporters anyway
Looks okay, but it would look better as a replica of Wrigley Field, since the dry-spell in DC is probably going to be at least as long as the Cubs have had.
"why dont all you Idaho transplants that claim to be native New Yorkers SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Whaaa? Idaho? New York? Whaaa?
I for one am a "transplant" that has never been to Idaho and would never claim to be a native New Yorker. Plus I wholeheartedly supported the stadium and the team. That's why I'm all the more dissapointed that the stadium has been hijacked by people that seem more concerned about what they don't want the stadium to be rather than on what they actually want the stadium to be.
Seriously, how many fans go to a baseball game and think? "This place really should deconstruct the rigors of ornamentation and Victorian and Edwardian notions of detail."
All we're getting is a 600 million dollar axe grinder.
I just mall.wordpress.com/
2006/03/15/
a-not-so-brief-word-on-the-new-ballpark/" target="_blank">wrote a long piece about my opinion of the stadium design. I don't want to write it again here. If you're interested, read it and comment back here (or there, or both).
Kick ass stadium!
I'm definatly looking forward to catching a few games when its ready.
This DDOT website has video of designs for the S. Cap. bridge, which will start construction in 2011. It's adjacent to the new ballpark. This adds another important dimension to the redevelopment of the area.
(www.southcapitolstreetbridgestudy.com/video/)
Move it a few hundred feet east or don't build it at all.
The Stadium is simply TOO CLOSE to South Capitol Street, and will thus complicate a tunnel and block the promenade (Mall like park) for South Capitol Street.
See
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/