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November 27, 2006

The Ledger Domain

Cisco Field

by Maury Brown

Ballpark architecture is functional art. The design of a baseball park has to be something more than just a work that presents an emotional response. It also has to serve its main purpose, creating a playing area for the game of baseball and seating for the fans. Since the construction of Orioles Park at Camden Yards in 1992, to some extent the design of ballparks has been focused on the emotional response to ballparks from our past—they're designed to remind us of a 'golden era' in the past.

The problem has been that, HOK Sport (the primary firm used on the vast majority of the new ballparks) has designed nearly identical interior designs with exterior facades of brick and mortar for all of their clients, stadiums that invariably appear to be similarly "throwback" or "retro." The exteriors, and the view from inside each, are the only main differentiating component in their overall design. Stand inside Great American Ballpark, or Citizens Bank, or Busch III, and the resemblance is striking. As for the views out from the ballparks, for the most part the MLB and the municipalities have pushed skylines, with the idea of constructing new ballparks located inside the urban core.

What has been lacking in the classic design over the last decade may have more to do with location of the ballparks than their design. The remaining ballparks that are revered as the most sacred—Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and even Yankee Stadium—are the last of the original "neighborhood" ballparks. Their designs were meant to accommodate their being shoehorned into tight urban locations. The atmosphere outside the ballpark was that of the surrounding neighborhood streets, instead of the personality-free automotive arteries designed to move you to and from the ballpark in the most expedient fashion.

The idea of a neighborhood ballpark design hasn't been approached since well before the cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadiums of the '60s and '70s. That is about to change. The first strikingly different ballpark since Skydome is about to be born in Fremont, CA, of all places.

Cisco Field Harkens Back to Neighborhood Design