According to Sports Business Daily, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels's BIG has teamed up with the NFL's Washington Redskins to design a new football stadium in an as-yet-undisclosed location near the nation's capital. Currently balancing a number of high-profile projects, BIG has yet to work an athletic venue, though it's in the running for a soccer stadium in Barcelona. The article quotes unnamed sources as confirming the partnership, though BIG's head of communications, Daria Pahhota, only confirmed the firm was designing an NFL stadium, not the specific client, and the Redskins's Senior VP/Communications, Tony Wyllie, didn't return an email for comment. Ingels did post a photo of Redskins M&M's on Instagram a few months ago, for what that's worth, and mentioned an in-the-works NFL project to Women's Wear Daily late last year.
While working with the Redskins, notorious for controversies surrounding the team's racist logo, may garner a degree of unwanted attention, this potential project also provides a celebrated contemporary architect with a chance to put his own spin on the increasingly high-tech world of sports stadiums. In his conversation with WWD, Ingels spoke of a transformative design:
"It could represent a paradigm change in stadium design whereas at some point it was only about being better, or just bigger. Now there is a whole set of aspects. There's interest, since the televised experience is getting so good. TVs are getting so good and big, and there are all these things you can do with them. The thing we've emphasized is the entire experience and the intimacy of the whole experience to make the live feeling and the communal feeling as massive as possible."
The Redskins are supposed to be making an announcement later this month confirming plans for a new field. The teams currently play at FedEx Field, which opened in 1997, in Greater Landover, Maryland, roughly 10 miles east of Washington, D.C.
· Next-Generation Stadiums in the Works Across North America [Curbed]
· Complete Bjarke Ingels coverage [Curbed]
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