It’s that time of year again: today, American stadium architecture will hit small screens nationwide as two National Football League teams face off to win the Super Bowl. Last year’s setting was the NRG Stadium designed by HOK Sport (now Populous); this year, it’s the U.S. Bank Stadium designed by HKS Architects. Today, the Philadelphia Eagles play the New England Patriots in the 1.8 million-square-foot Minneapolis venue, which opened in 2016.
“It’s beauty versus the beast — the beast being the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the domed, former home of the Minnesota Vikings that has been demolished,” writes Josh Peter in USA Today.
As Brian Libby explained in ARCHITECT in April 2016, a few months before the stadium opened, the Metrodome was plagued with roof collapses in heavy snowfall, so the HKS team designed this new Vikings home with that problem in mind. “The roof pitches 14 degrees, starting from 205 feet tall at its east end to a peak height of 270 feet to the west,” Libby wrote. “Snow slides into a gutter ringing the stadium roof perimeter that’s equipped with a heated melting system.”
The U.S. Bank Stadium is notable for the amount of daylight in the stadium, despite being completely enclosed: Over half of the roof is composed of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), and large amounts of glass on the façade provide additional natural light.
“With its sculpted glass carapace, U.S. Bank Stadium has turned the arena into an architectural bauble, a brandable object that aspires to more than football,” writes architecture critic Inga Saffron in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Saffron also referenced the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, designed by HOK, as another example.
For HKS principal John Hutchings, FAIA, today’s game will be the fourth Super Bowl he’s seen live. HKS also designed the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which hosted the Super Bowl in 2011, and the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, which hosted the game in 2012. The firm also designed the under-construction stadium in Inglewood, Calif., which will host the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams as well as the Super Bowl in 2022.
Visit ARCHITECT’s Project Gallery for more images of the U.S. Bank Stadium by HKS Architects.
