PROFILE: EARL SANTEE
Populous designed Target Field to integrate with all transport networks and to appear iconic no matter how it is approached
I try to experience the communities as the people who live there experience them. I stay there, use the public transportation system, go to the restaurants and bars, the public activities and sporting events. I want to fully understand the unique differences between that community and others – what's great about that city, what the aspirations of the people who live there are. It's also about the art of possibility. What can that community become? You have to have a really deep under- standing of all of these things in order to make a project authentic – you can't make it up.
How does the design of a sports building affect the experience of the fans?
Having a stadium changes the dynamics of a community completely. It's important to understand how that works – to under- stand that the moment when we take the subway to a stadium or ballpark is the first moment of our experience. The culmination of that is the event itself, but at the end of that, it doesn't stop – you go back out into the community, back on the subway, back to the restaurants or bars, back home or to your hotel. Understanding the synergy of all those experiences, both inside and outside of the stadiums, is so important. At Target Field in downtown Minneapolis (2010), we designed a baseball stadium that was completely connected to all possible modes of transport – we built a pedestrian skywalk that links the stadium to the city, we have bike trails running under the site, we
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CLADGLOBAL.COM EARL SANTEE BIO
Earl Santee received a bachelor’s degree in architecture and environmental design from the University of Kansas, and joined Populous (then HOK Sport) in 1985. Describing himself as an urban designer first and an architect second, Santee's philosophy is that urban sites shape the buildings he designs. Santee has designed more than 40 sports venues across the US, including the new Yankee Stadium, New York (2009), Marlins Park, Miami (2012), Target Field, Minneapolis (2010), McLane Stadium at Baylor University (2014) and the Texas A&M Kyle Field redevelopement (due for completion in 2015) A senior principal at Populous, Santee is a member of the American Institute of Architects, the Society for American Baseball Research, Stadium Managers Association and the Urban Land Institute. In 2014, he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
built in access to light rail and commuter rail, there’s a car park on site and it's connected to the bus service.
This had a big impact on the architecture, because we wanted to design something that was iconic no matter how you approached it. We had to think about how people would see the park from the highway system three or four
miles away, from mass transit 10 miles away, or from close up as they approached it on foot on by bike. Part of the design is manifested by the opportunities created by the site.
What have you been working on over the past 12 months? We recently completed Baylor University's McLane Stadium [a new 45,000-seat American football stadium that opened in Waco, Texas in August 2014]. I'm currently working on the design of the Atlanta Braves stadium, a Major League baseball stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, and we're in the middle of construction on the Kyle Field [American] football stadium at Texas A&M University, which is the largest renovation project in collegiate sports history. It will open during 2015.
What have been your most challenging projects? Target Field in Minneapolis was one of our most challenging projects, because we had to put a 41,000-seat, 13 acre ballpark on an 8 and half acre site which is very tight. We had to make do with what we had space-wise – it was a very urban site, and was surrounded by a railway line, a federal highway, viaducts, an interstate, an under- ground creek and a waste incinerator plant – among other things. Making the project fit within the site was a huge challenge. We built under the bridges and vertically in some places, we built out over the street where we could. We took advantage of every nook and cranny on the site to make it work.
CLAD mag 2015 ISSUE 1
PHOTO: CHRISTY RADECIC. OPPOSITE PAGE: PAUL CROSBY
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