I remember reading about the various Olympic stadia in China about 5 years ago, maybe more, when the buildings were just beginning to be built, and thinking about how amazing they were.  It’s a shame, I think, that American architecture (when it comes to sports, at least) is so based on nostalgia, instead of addressing problems, and their solutions.

Building a stadium to act like a bird’s nest, to make climate control easy?  Brilliant.  Building a stadium with exposed I-beams and red brick to make it seem old-timey?  Really, really, tired.

I think that all depends on your perspective. For my part, I *wish* more minor-league parks had a cantilevered roof, which apparently went out of style around 1950.

The sad reality is it appears that you’re more likely to see them in the North, where they’re really only needed for rain delays, versus the South, where the smart teams don’t schedule day games after May.

That may be boring in terms of architecture, but if you disagree, well, you’re more than welcome to sit in the steel-and-concrete bowls in 95-degree heat and see how long it is until you need an IV.

The preliminary sketches for the Miami Marlins stadium looked pretty slick. It had modernist influences in its symmetry and structural accents but its color palette and roof shape are uniquely influenced by South Floridian art deco.

Too bad nobody wants to pay for it.

the new nats part has suprisingly little of the nostalgic look.  though, it doesn’t really have a real modern look either.  it’s just kind of there.  ooh, but it does have its own build-a-bear station!

You can’t blame baseball for not being modern, or not experimenting.  Baseball isn’t the right sport to experiment with.  You should blame football and basketball, sports with little by way of a need for nostalgia in the way they build their stadiums.  Why aren’t there any real cutting edge designs in the building of indoor stadiums?

There’s at least one farily interestingly designed stadium in the NFL, the Arizona Cardinals stadium.

Maybe baseball clubs prefer retro parks because, unlike a corporate office building, they actually have to appeal to the public. 

Much of modernist style is just an expression of the architect’s narcissism—little effort to integrate with their surroundings, no attempt to work within the traditions of a particular place, etc.  An architecturally “daring” building in Shanghai could just as easily be located in Brussels or Kansas City and no one would know the difference.

The extreme forms of retro ballpark style come close to kitsch (think about Houston’s ridiculous fake railroad).  But the better ones (Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Baltimore, Cleveland) are simply built to last.  People 50 years from now will still admire these parks. It’s unlikely that the same can be said for any modernist building.

I thought the plans for the Rays waterfront stadium with a sail-like roof looked very beautiful and unique as far as U.S. baseball stadiums go. It seems that it is a no go, but perhaps when they do get a new ballpark they will find a similarly innovative design.