Designing the modern baseball stadium
Friday, April 11th, 2008
Photo of Camden Yards by wallyg on flickr.
In a fascinating essay about the design of new baseball stadiums, Michael Beirut asks a simple question: “Why is it so hard to build a baseball stadium that looks like it belongs in the 21st century?” It’s been sixteen years since Camden Yards opened in Baltimore and he is discouraged by the Camden-esque design of seemingly every new baseball stadium built since. He feels the Mets missed an opportunity to break out of this pattern with Citi Field, due to open in 2009.
But in reality Flushing Meadows is hardly the middle of nowhere, and has a potent design tradition of its own. Originally a city dumping ground memorialized as The Great Gatsby’s “valley of ashes,” it was cleared by parks commissioner Robert Moses for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and fifteen years later, the 1964 World’s Fair. Its grounds were the site of some of the most iconic and entertaining visionary architecture ever built in North America: Wallace Harrison’s Trylon and Perisphere, Norman Bel Geddes’ Futurama at the General Motors Pavilion, not to mention the Unisphere, which still stands today within sight of the new Citi Field. Wouldn’t any of these have made great precedents for a new pleasure dome to be built in Flushing Meadows?
April 11th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
i heart baseball.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Hi —
I thought you may be interested in this latest post on Terra Rossa from Whit Ayres titled “National Past Time Goes Green.” It talks about how the new Washington National Stadium leads off as one of the most environmentally friendly stadiums out there.
Terra Rossa is a blog that offers a free market perspective to solve our environmental problems.
Please check out the post and leave a comment on our scoreboard (aka comment section.)
Thanks,
Terra Rossa
April 17th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Fucking hippies.