WHEN HELMUTH, OBATA & KASSABAUM (HOK) was commissioned to work on Nationals Park, there was no such thing as the Washington Nationals. Jim Chibnall, the lead architect, was working with the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, but he didn't know who his ultimate boss would be or what that eventual boss would want.

But he and the rest of the HOK team fell in love with city's historic monuments and wanted to translate their shapes to the stadium.

"The Washington monument is a line; the Jefferson memorial is a sphere; the Lincoln memorial is a cube — so those kinds of explorations, really helped us," says Chibnall, who has worked on more than a dozen stadiums for HOK, most recently the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis. "We started drawing circles and triangles, and out of that came the result of the building. The seating bowl is really a circle in plan. The elevation along south capital, we looked at a series of rectangles and squares and certainly triangles there."

Other aspects of the city also played a big role in the stadium. Early in the project, Chibnall decided he wanted Cherry Blossoms as a part of the design, and he put them in left field behind the seats in left field. That section of the outfield has no upper concourse and instead opens up to a view of the Capitol building — at least for the sections whose views are not blocked by buildings or construction.

"I also like the various out of the way places that offer you opportunities to see the city in the background," says Chibnall, who adds that if he had been able to make the "perfect" building, he would have tried to use more of natural materials like limestone. "Certainly the south capitol ramp, the pedestrian ramp when you're going up to the upper concourse; it has a wonderful view of the Washington Monument."

» GOING GREEN
When it opens, Nationals Park will also be the first stadium in the country to get LEED certification, the U.S. Green Building Council's benchmark for green buildings. HOK used 20 percent recycled materials and utilized high efficiency field lighting for what they say will be a 21 percent energy savings — just a couple of the steps it took to get the certification. It will still use a ton of energy for every game, but the designers took steps to ensure it used less than every other stadium.

Photos by courtesy of HOK/Devrouax and Purnell

Posted by Ian Herbert at 12:01 AM on March 26, 2008
Tagged in Nationals , Nationals Park , Sports , Top Stories