The 4th one, no disrespect to you beast, is idiotic. I've been to St Louis ball park. I like the open view they have. They dropped the number of seats in their new stadium for a reason. Money. Why pay to have empty seats game after game? It's difficult to sell out a large stadium for 80 baseball games. Old Busch had almost 58,000 seats when it opened. They culled it down to a little less than 50,000 when it closed. The new one started with less than 44,000. They bumped it up to 45,500. (I bet some of those extra seats are premium seats.) Football doesn't have that problem. There are only 8 or 9 regular season games.The Packers have a waiting list as big as the current stadium has seating. There are between 80,000 and 140,000 people on the waiting list. Every one of them will want a minimum of two tickets. That's enough for 3 more Lambeau Fields. For the Packers to remove an entire section of seats the length of one of the sidelines doesn't make sense. IF they were to do something like that it would be like Busch Stadium it would be in the corner of the end zone. In St Louis it's in the corner of left field. As you mentioned there are hotels and restaurants over there. In Green Bay, nothing remotely equivalent at this time.
Originally Posted by: wpr
No offense taken, just to be clear, I find the 4th one both extremely idiot and very interesting design (because of its uniqueness).
First thing, as I mentioned, from a security perspective, I'm thinking so many things could go from, from making it harder to protect whatever team is on that side from the crowd, to crowd or even vehicle rushing the field or people. You'd need a lot of extra security.
Also as you mentioned loss of seat tickets revenue. Though you also mentioned a huge negative loophole in the team seat revenue sharing.
As for the Packers and grass growing, I think their stadium is north/south, so that would not open the south for better grass growing.
I think I'd love to see a stadium designed like it, but it would probably be a disaster for any team that frequently fills their stadium and would probably need to be a college team that isn't a top tier team.
But I also sorta enjoy the idea of giving your opponents side clearly worse seating design, still the same quality seats, but worse design to see the game and have their cheers reach the field.
I do believe the open side, would need seats with some additional height as it went. Not nearly as much as the other side, but so those in further back rows could still see.
But a school that is none for creating architecture, more than say elite sports, could totally use that as an awesome gimmick, just like some schools have used colored fields (Boise's blue field which sometimes birds dive on thinking it's a lake, or I think Washington State's Red field, which just bothers me for some reason, make me angry watching teams play a red field).
Also Iowa has it so they can wave to the Children Hospital, you could put whatever you want on that side, such as a hospital, or a fancy restaurant to see the field while eating all year round, or turn them into box seats in it's own building on the open side.
It'll take a ton of creativity to pull off successful, but I do think it could be done (of course there is more ways to fail than success at it).
Again, probably shouldn't be tried with a professional or top elite or super crowded college team. Also someplace with nice weather year round.
My first thought, was I'm volunteering San Diego (due to weather), but looking up architecture programs, Rice University (in Houston, Tx.) might be another interesting fit. Most of the top architecture programs (from the list I found) seem to be North East or California.
But absolutely, huge unnecessary risk that only should be taken for a team that's looking to show off their stadium designs year round and focus on creativity more than functionality and therefore, a school that doesn't pack their stadiums early and often.