This collegiate football stadium addition elevates the fan experience, connects athlete and spectator more directly, and provides a ‘front porch’ to the university’s southern entrance. It nestles between the bermed viewing flanks of the existing stadium while complementing the surrounding performing arts venues and athletic facilities. The project was constructed with a tight budget on a highly-accelerated schedule, squeezed between football seasons to minimize fan disruption.
The addition includes upper and lower seating bowls, an HD video board and sound system, and a two-level ‘premium club’ with support kitchen. In unifying the previously independent east and west seating stands, the project raises the stadium’s seating capacity to 61,000 including 3,000 premium club seats.
The material palette, emphatically raw with moments of color and refinement, includes cast-in-place concrete, CMU, fritted glass, and single-skin metal panels. Attention-grabbing environmental graphics add to the excitement and heighten team spirit, while corrugated steel serving stations give an appreciative nod to a major corporate donor (a grain bin manufacturer). Extensive glazing at the upper club level provides views north into the stadium bowl and south over public gardens.
Project Type: Recreation
Location: Ames, Iowa
Size: 148,478 SF
Completed: 2015
Collaborators: HNTB Sports Architecture
