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In 1997, Michael Rushman of the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals called architectural iconoclast Peter Eisenman to see if he would be interested in submitting a design for a new stadium. Do you know anything about football? Rushman asked. The 74-year-old Eisenman, famous for high-concept projects such as Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, replied that he did, in fact, know a few things about the sport. He explained how he spends Sundays every fall sitting in the nosebleed section of Giants Stadium drinking beer and eating hot dogs while cheering on his beloved team. Then he named the 1947 Chicago Cardinals backfield. He won the job a week later.
As a longtime New York Giants season ticket holder, Eisenman has logged quite a few hours tailgating on the asphalt, staring up at the cement-dominated, strictly utilitarian arena. “I hate it,” he says of Giants Stadium. “It’s terrible.” So when he got the Cardinals assignment, he set out to design something that would be a kind of cathedral for football fans like himself but also a cultural icon for the entire region, something both tailgaters and tourists could enjoy.
One of the Cardinals’ stadium’s most impressive features—an inclined retractable roof—was Eisenman’s idea, though he is quick to credit the engineers for executing the grand plan. The roof could have been an energy hog, but it offsets the power drain of the uphill push required to close it by pumping watts back into the grid when the roof slides open.
Eisenman proposed a grass field that slides in and out of the stadium on an enormous wheeled tray, like a kitchen drawer, because he thought this would make the stadium itself more versatile. Football games, he notes, take up only 10 or so days a year, and all those other days should be open to other events. The field-on-a-tray can slide outside the stadium in roughly an hour, so Cardinals Stadium could host an NFL game on Sunday night and be ready for a boat show by Monday morning.
To make sure every fan gets a great view, Eisenman designed the twin trusses that support the stadium’s roof so that neither one obscures the field from the upper rows. Even the concourse is fan-centric. At most stadiums, the walkways and concession stands are on the exterior, away from the action, but Eisenman set it up so that the entire concourse has a view of the field. He can get his hot dog and not miss a play. “Because I’m an architect and a football fan,” he explains, “I didn’t want the architecture to get in the way of the football.”
—Gregory Mone
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