LA NFL Stadium And Masterplan
Woods Bagot is expanding into the world of sporting design and has appointed globally renowned specialist architect Dan Meis to lead the new department.
As global director of the new ‘Woods Bagot Sport’, Meis will expand his Los Angeles-based team to include design and technical experts in New York, London and Sydney.
Meis is an award-winning sports and entertainment architect. In 2001, Time magazine named him among its ‘100 Innovators in the World of Sports’. Previously, Meis was a co-founding partner of NBBJ Sports and Entertainment and a senior principal with Populous.
His past notable projects include Staples Center in Los Angeles, Safeco Field in Seattle, Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan, and facilities at the United States Tennis Association’s National Tennis Center in Queens, New York.
The new group will continue Meis’s current projects including the new NFL Stadium at Grand Crossing in Los Angeles and a 50,000-seat, multi-use venue for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
He is also leading conceptual design efforts for a new stadium for soccer club AS Roma in Rome, Italy, and Sports City Stadium in Doha, Qatar, for the 2022 FIFA World Cup (in association with Aedas).
Ross Donaldson, Woods Bagot’s Group Managing Director, said the move anticipates changing demands.
“The formidable economics of sports development is spurring new models for state-of-the-art, year-round destinations and innovative approaches to their development, design and delivery.”
“With Dan’s deep expertise in the sports sector and Woods Bagot’s diverse capabilities—from planning mixed-use urban districts, to advanced technical design, to supporting public-private partnerships—our Global Studio now offers the breadth of knowledge this new era requires.”
Meis comments:
"One challenge of being an expert in anything is recognizing when to think outside the box of the proven approaches. And this unprecedented sea change in the sports-entertainment experience driven by advancing display and mobile technologies, social media and 24/7 sports networks, calls for fresh thinking,”
“We’ve tuned Woods Bagot Sport to deliver highly creative and innovative solutions that recognize the opportunity this evolving building type represents and help owners to develop new revenues.”
Woods Bagot’s sporting projects in Australia have included the Randwick Racecourse, Manuka Oval and the Sydney International Regatta Centre redevelopments.
