Author: Kelly Pedone

FM Issue: May/June 2019

If location, location, location is the most important factor in real estate, flexibility is key to successful building design. By creating buildings that can change with the times, facility designers can meet changing trends dictated by cultural shifts and technological advancements. Additionally, answering the call for creative and effective security is aided by adaptable building design.

Designers work to maximize the user experience, facility flexibility, and building efficiency to meet each building’s purpose while consumers demand a higher quality and more authentic experience. Venue designers need an understanding of how people want to use spaces and engage in an event.

“It’s about looking 10 to 20 years or more ahead, as best we can, and thinking about how a design decision made now might limit future opportunities,” says Ken Stockdell, Vice President and Director of Convention Centers for HKS. “Evaluating trends means making judgments about how accommodating them might limit that flexibility when the next wave of trends emerges.”

Safety and Security

While not a trend in the traditional sense, security is at the top of many facility users’ minds today. Long lines and handheld metal detectors are familiar sites at entrances of stadiums, arenas, and other large places of assembly. Mobile magnetometers often greet guests outside a building, requiring them to go through airport-styled security searches before entering a venue. While considered a necessity in today’s society, it doesn’t have to be such an up-front and center element, says Gregory Hoss, president of David M. Schwarz Architects.

At the new Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, magnetometers have been placed in vestibules so they are not the first thing that guests see as they enter the building, Hoss says. The building was designed so that guests enter the front door, and then make a slight turn to go through security.

Beyond initial security searches, building design in and of itself can help with keeping a building secure. Maintaining opening spaces in order to see around corners allows building personnel to monitor potential threats.

Permanent barriers – including landscaping – outside buildings are also built into design.

“The biggest trend we are seeing is the attempt to develop and utilize open, public space, while also meeting all of today’s stringent security requirements in a seamless manner,” says Tom Scarangello, Chairman and CEO of Thornton Tomasetti. “To address potential [threats] we often have to utilize an entire toolbox of security procedures, starting from exterior and interior layout changes, structural and façade hardening, electronic surveillance, effective and efficient personnel access technologies and cyber security, and combine all of it into an integrated command and operations center.”

Social Networking

That desire for guests to move freely through buildings has impacted the way designers view seating options. Club seats and luxury suites had been the way to get fans to spend more money at stadiums and arenas. But today’s fans no longer want to sit in the same spot for three hours watching a game or enjoying a concert, instead preferring to meet up with friends in various spots of the facility.

“Fans want options. They want to move around, they want to be immersed in the energy of the event around them as well as connected to the action or the performance, says Bart Miller, principle of Walter P. Moore. “Loge boxes, loft suites, party decks, and unique bar experiences that provide unobstructed views of the action are becoming essentials, while traditional suite inventory and seating capacity are being diminished to make room for more innovative social experiences.”

Detroit’s Little Caesar’s Arena, for example, has a concourse that was designed wider than traditional arenas to incorporate retail outlets. Fans wandering the concourse get the sense that they are actually outside of the facility walking along a city street.

The days of fans buying traditional suites and staying there for an entire event are all but gone, Hoss says. Dickies Arena, for example, was designed with loge boxes that provide a level of suite service but in a more informal setting.

Placing these seating options lower in the bowel, along with club seats, helps fans feel like they are more part of the event, Hoss says.

Even bowl seating needs to be flexible.

DLR Group Senior Associate Tom Tingle says that he is seeing a decrease in fixed seats in stadium bowls to provide more standing room locations.

“People want to be at the event with their friends and take in the atmosphere and not be anchored to a specific seat,” he says. “Many recent facilities are providing drink rails along concourses, terraces, or elevated decks where people can stand and watch the event.

“Sports facilities are now being measured by capacity in lieu of fixed seats.”

Still, there is a need for suites, but their use is somewhat different requiring a newer design. “We haven’t done an arena in a while where a suite had the old-style furniture of couches and chairs,” Hoss says. “Suites are being used more as a base gathering spot. People want to walk around so you’ll have some high tables. This makes for less expensive construction.”

Ron Turner, lead and principle for Gensler sports and convention center division, agrees that use of suites has changed.

“Suites as we know with four walls and enclosed are a dying breed and a more flexible and open environment is becoming the norm,” he says. “The variety of these spaces in a building, to appeal to a broad range of guests, is what makes the building successful or not.”

Flex Space

Making the most of the least amount of space has been on the upswing for many years, especially with convention centers. Managers desiring to find additional revenue streams seek to convert ballrooms into meeting rooms and shepherd guest flow from meeting rooms to lounge areas.

“Flexibility has been a trend for 20 years, but owners are always looking for more ways to transform space to rent as much as possible,” says Don Grinberg, whose firm specializes in convention center design.

Demand for exhibit space has been flat for more than 10 years, but the need for meeting space has increased, Stockdell says. The demographics of people attending events – mostly millennials – have dictated this change. What is emerging is the desire to extend meeting space outside of meeting rooms.

“These are people who have grown up in a social coffee shop environment so are looking for that at meetings,” he says. “We can accommodate that kind of lounge-like space by being intentional in creating alcove spaces.”

The line between meeting room and the concourse outside will dissolve, some say, but even more than moving meetings outside of rooms, many building designs are including outside space. The use of the outdoors – whether ground level or rooftop – is also a way for convention centers to bring in members of the community and not just meeting attendees.

A recent renovation to the Lexington Center in Kentucky includes meeting rooms that align a city park. The space was used for pop-up retail shops at Christmas and open to the public during the holidays.

“The days of convention centers being isolated castles are over,” Grinberg says. “Flexibility is not only how buildings can be used by meeting planners but also reaches out for public use.”

Performing arts theater design is also realizing the need for multi-purpose space. The inclusion of cafes and restaurants, event and reception spaces, outdoor terraces, and rooftop reception areas are emerging in new design as well as renovations, says Paul Westlake, Senior Principal of DLR Group’s cultural and performing arts studio.

“Theaters are now designed to be destinations,” he says. “They are moving away from traditional design to contemporary design approaches to host and attract a wider of variety of entertainment options and a diversified demographic.”

Tech Trends

Accommodating innovations in technology has become front and center in design. No longer is having access to Wi-Fi and charging stations a plus for facility guests, it’s pretty much a requirement. Having good Wi-Fi is essential today as patchy connection can lead to an uproar for sports fans who want to share their experiences on social media to meeting attendees who now bring 3.5 devices with them to an event.

Ample charging stations are needed throughout facilities, but building design requires more to ensure guests are connected. For many guests, technology starts before they arrive by tapping into apps that give them event information. So for designers, the question is when to engage them in the building’s wireless system, Hoss says.

“Is it in the garage, plaza, or in the building?” he asks. “We are being asked to incorporate it everywhere, which is hard for a designer since it’s not always pretty to look at.”

Designers must create avenues so that buildings can scale up their technology needs over time. Pipes that feed wires and fibers need to wind throughout a building and space to upgrade needs to be large enough to make it easy to make upgrades.

“We’ve come a long way from voice lines and copper wiring,” Stockdell says.

Technology is not solely an element to be considered for guests; rather artists are in need of greater design to accommodate their equipment.

“Concerts, in particular, are asking more of venue roof structures with each new tour by applying heavier and more numbers loads,” Miller says. “High-performing and high-capacity rigging grids that provide more coverage and better access are critical to ensuring a venue can host any tour and transition smoothly from one event to the next.

“New venues have to have them and venues that opened 10-15 years ago are scrambling to increase their grid capacity and coverage as a result.”

A designer’s goal is to always try and set the trends as well as stay on top of ideas that work and don’t work, Turner says.

“The guests of our buildings are what determine what’s next, based upon demographics, gender, and the technology they require in order to attend an event instead of staying home and watching on television,” he says. “It is more of an evolution more than what stands the test of time.”

Kelly Pedone is a freelance writer based in Charlottesville, Virginia.