Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer John Merrill. The firm opened its second office, in New York City, in 1937 and has since expanded internationally, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, and Dubai.
Kauffman Stadium, often called "The K", is a baseball stadium located in Kansas City, Missouri. It is the ballpark to the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball (MLB). It is part of the Truman Sports Complex together with the adjacent Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL). The stadium is named for Ewing Kauffman, the founder and first owner of the Royals. It opened in 1973 as Royals Stadium and was named for Kauffman twenty years later on July 2, 1993. Since its last major renovation in 2009, the listed seating capacity is 37,903.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards, commonly known as Camden Yards, is a baseball stadium in Baltimore, Maryland. It is the ballpark of Major League Baseball's Baltimore Orioles, and the first of the "retro" major league ballparks constructed during the 1990s and early 2000s. It was completed in 1992 to replace Memorial Stadium. It stadium is in downtown Baltimore, a few blocks west of the Inner Harbor in the Camden Yards Sports Complex.
Gyo Obata was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK. He lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and still worked in HOK's St. Louis office. He designed several notable buildings, including the McDonnell Planetarium and GROW Pavilion at the Saint Louis Science Center, the Independence Temple of the Community of Christ church, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
The Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex is an entertainment complex located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It opened in 1994 and is owned by the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and is managed by the Gateway Economic Development Corporation, a non-profit group with board members who are appointed by county and city leaders.
Populous, legally Populous Holdings, Inc., is a global architectural and design practice specializing in sports facilities, arenas and convention centers, as well as the planning and design of major special events.
Municipal Auditorium is a multi-purpose facility located in Kansas City, Missouri. It opened in 1935 and features Streamline Moderne and Art Deco architecture and architectural details.
Downtown Kansas City is the central business district (CBD) of Kansas City, Missouri and the Kansas City metropolitan area which contains 3.8% of the areas employment. It is between the Missouri River in the north, to 31st Street in the south; and from the Kansas–Missouri state line eastward to Bruce R. Watkins Drive as defined by the Downtown Council of Kansas City; the 2010 Greater Downtown Area Plan formulated by the City of Kansas City defines the Greater Downtown Area to be the city limits of North Kansas City and Missouri to the north, the Kansas–Missouri state line to the west, 31st Street to the south and Woodland Avenue to the east. However, the definition used by the Downtown Council is the most commonly accepted.
HOK, formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum and legally HOK Group, Inc., is an American design, architecture, engineering, and urban planning firm, founded in 1955.
HKS, Inc. is an American international architecture firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas (US).
NBBJ is an American global architecture, planning and design firm with offices in Boston, Columbus, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Pune, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C..
The architecture of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, especially Kansas City, Missouri, includes major works by some of the world's most distinguished architects and firms, including McKim, Mead and White; Jarvis Hunt; Wight and Wight; Graham, Anderson, Probst and White; Hoit, Price & Barnes; Frank Lloyd Wright; the Office of Mies van der Rohe; Barry Byrne; Edward Larrabee Barnes; Harry Weese; and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Kivett & Myers was a Kansas City, Missouri architecture firm that pioneered the design of modern professional sports stadiums.
ROSSETTI is an architectural design and planning firm headquartered in Detroit, Michigan.
Daniel Leonard Dworsky was an American architect who was a longstanding member of the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. Among other works, Dworsky designed Crisler Arena, the basketball arena at the University of Michigan named for Dworsky's former football coach, Fritz Crisler. Other professional highlights include designing Drake Stadium at UCLA, the Federal Reserve Bank in Los Angeles and the Block M seating arrangement at Michigan Stadium. He is also known for a controversy with Frank Gehry over the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
DLR Group is an employee-owned integrated design firm providing architecture, engineering, planning, and interior design. Their brand promise is to elevate the human experience through design. A self-described advocate for sustainable design, the firm was an early adopter of the Architecture 2030 Challenge, and an initial signatory to the AIA 2030 Commitment and the China Accord.
Dan Meis, FAIA, RIBA is an American architect best known for designing sports and entertainment facilities including Staples Center, Safeco Field, Paul Brown Stadium Stadio Della Roma, and Everton FC's new Everton Stadium. He began his career in Chicago under the mentorship of well-known architect Helmut Jahn, and later included time at sports architecture firms, including co-founding the sports and entertainment practice of NBBJ. Meis currently operates his own independent studio established in 2007, MEIS Architects, with offices in New York City and Los Angeles, California.
Manica is a Kansas City, Kansas-based architecture firm. The firm owned by namesake David Manica was formed in 2007, who previously worked at sports architecture firm HOK Sport, where he was the lead designer on The O2 Arena, the new Wembley Stadium and the Beijing National Stadium.
Janet Marie Smith is a Major League Baseball (MLB) executive, architect, and urban planner. Smith has built and managed renovations of several major and minor league baseball parks in the United States including Baltimore, Atlanta, Boston, and Los Angeles. She became one of the first women to hold an executive position with any Major League Baseball club when she was promoted to Vice President of Planning and Development with the Baltimore Orioles in 1989. Smith is best known for her work developing Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which set a new standard for ballparks "incorporating historic, old-fashioned ballpark architecture with state-of-the-art modern conveniences." Through her work, Smith has demonstrated how to seamlessly blend the best elements of the past with those of the future.
Ron Labinski was an American architect, notable for influential designs of stadiums for professional baseball and football. Focusing for much of his career on sports venues, Labinski was instrumental in establishing sports and assembly venue design as architectural specialties. Labinski's work led to the establishment of several such specialized firms in Kansas City, composed of many of Labinski's former colleagues, making Kansas City the center of sports-related design. Labinski has been described as the world's first sports venue architect.
