Look for something like a giant space ship amid the farmland at the western end of suburban Phoenix? Here you are. Designed by world-renowned architect Peter Eisenman in association with HOK Sport (a leader in sports architecture), the $450 million new home of the Arizona Cardinals is at your eyes. The site is chosen at a parched desert landscape near the Loop 101 freeway. Eisenman says the new stadium takes its basic form from resemble of a magnificent Barrel Cactus that spread across the Arizona desert.

The 75,000 seat capacity facility is an indoor stadium with 1.7 million square feet laid and its vital function will be the home ground of the Phoenix Cardinals Grid Iron team. BDS were retained by Schuff Steel Company in Phoenix to detail the 6,500 Tons of steelwork in the roof of the stadium. Due to the complexity of the dome shaped roof, Schuff Steel considers maintaining integrity between primary and secondary steel structure and hence BDS detailed the 1000 Tons of Joists and Joist Girders for the project. The most interesting feature, indeed, is the field itself. Made of natural grass, it will sit outside under the desert sun 340 days a year. For games, it will slide into the stadium like a kitchen cutting board. While leaving it outside the stadium will eliminate humidity problems inside and save $50 million in costs associated with maintaining the grass indoors.

The project clashes two paradigms. Eisenman is one of architecture’s aging bad boys; professional football is about playing within the rules. By contrast, Eisenman is an architect who sometimes gets trapped in his own head, he is known for conceptual references that, while playful, can border on the impenetrable. What got him takes the job, Eisenman likes to say that he was the only candidate who could name every member of the Chicago Cardinals legendary 1947 backfield, also consider he is a faithful football fan. It is an ethereal sight, a great silver mushroom that looks as if it has sprouted from the desert floor. Yet somehow, the visitor rarely experiences the building in a truly visceral, emotional way. Eisenman is not kinda detail man, he will never match the structural refinement of, say it Carlo Scarpa, who could transform the connection between a steel handrail and a stone wall into a work of art. His talent polishes in expressing conceptual ideas in architectural form.

Those remember with the early renderings of the current design will pick up on some last-minute changes. A beige roof has kicked out the silvery steel one that would have matched the stadium’s exterior shell and lent the stadium a sleeker appearance. And the vertical slots cutting through the exterior skin were originally intended to cut into the surrounding pavement, rooting the stadium into the site; instead, they end at the base.

The arena’s interior, however, summons 19th-century bridge technology. Expanding on the symbolism of the spiral, Eisenman animates the interior by setting it slightly off balance. He routes most of the circulation in the space between the inner stadium’s concrete structure and its exterior metal skin, with elevators shooting up through a Piranesian web of crisscrossing steel braces. The winding form of the exterior shell is echoed in the outline of the retractable roof and in the gray-and-red color pattern of the stadium seats.

The facility’s roof will comprise of Bird-Air Fabric that leads up to the translucent retractable roof opening, allowing sunlight to in even when it is closed, which it will be happen when temperatures hit three digits early in the coming season, while in the cooler months the roof will remain open to take advantage of the Arizona sunshine. In addition, the operable roof has been designed to give the right balance of sun on the field and shade in the seats.

The facility has two large panels that will retract to uncover the entire playing field and has been designed to provide the right balance of sun on the field and shade in the seats. An open roof will allow fans to take advantage of Arizona’s climate and clear blue skies, but when closed will allow the building to host large conventions, trade shows, concerts and other indoor events. The retractable roof will slide in two directions, northwest and southeast, to open. The Operable Panels are the first one in North America able to move along a curved surface. This was achieved by mechanical contractor Uni Systems with an open circuit system using the roof slope to leverage the movement of the articulated bogeys supporting the operable panels under the gravitational tension and cable drive system for closure.

The skin of the stadium will feature large, reflective bluish-silver insulated metal panels with small gaps in between to allow light to flow in and out of the arena. The stadium and on-site parking lots will occupy approximately 160 acres adjacent to Westgate, the new Coyotes Arena project. Westgate consists of a 223-acre master-planned development that will have significant retail, entertainment and commercial components. Parking for 14,000 cars will be accommodated on-site. Offsite parking for an additional 6,000 cars will be available within walking distance at the Coyotes Arena project. There will be more 6,000 parking spaces within one mile of the site.

Unfortunately, Eisenman had to accept bitter compromises on this project. Along with eliminating the slots in the pavement for budget reasons, for example, the Cardinals cost-cutters rejected the idea to continuing the glass slots across the roof. As a result, they look like mere conventional windows from inside the arena rather than incisions that slice through the entire building. Developers call this value engineering; to architects, it is a form of water torture, in which a design is eroded drop by drop until the original meaning is lost. What’s more, in a possible bout of cold feet, the stadium owners choose to flood the building with graphics rather than architectural finishing. Concrete corridors are wallpapered in photos of receivers with outstretched arms. The once-bare concrete walls at one end of the field are now painted a Cardinal red.

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