Could this work in Portland.... I really like the design...and it's created by Portland firms!

Two Portland Firms Vying For Japanese Stadium

Portland and Nagoya-based Architecture W, along with Portland's Ziba Design and international engineering firm Arup are teaming together on a proposal for a new baseball stadium in Hiroshima.

According to Brian White of Architecture W, the proposal came together because his partner, Michel Weenick, "...has a good friend at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo and he asked Michel if he new anybody who could do a baseball stadium as he had some clients that wanted to invest in the Hiroshima stadium. So Michel and I were talking about who to recommend and eventually we just decided to tell him we could do it. We thought about who were the best people we could get for this job. I wanted to somehow use the design power in PDX as a base."

Not only was Ziba tapped to help round the architectural design proposal with a complete branding campaign for the stadium's occupant, the Carps baseball team, but White also sought out German landscape designer Herbert Dreiseitl, who designed Portland's Tanner Springs Park.

"Dreiseitl landscaping plan is quite beautiful," White says, "and includes his green thinking on water as the idea behind our design is that the Hiroshima Carp should incorporate a modern version of a Koi pond that also serves as a water reclamation/filtration system for this particular part of the city."

"Hiroshima has this wonderful peace festival that reminds people of the destruction that took place there where they float basically all sorts of brown bags with candles down the river," he continues. "It is quite a beautiful event and our scheme was to create a lantern that symbolizes Hiroshima's unique place in history and also serves as a symbol for the city as the stadium sits along the Shinkansen line right before the main train station."

"We were a little nervous as we were obviously the small fish in the sea of consultants but we were the client's ears so we held our own. Like I said, a lot of the Japanese associates were a little skeptical of the team but after they saw our first pass, the client and everybody was on board with our direction."

The proposal, which is competing with four or five others for the contract, was submitted last week, and White expects they'll receive word in about a month.

Meanwhile, just the fact that a tiny firm like Architecture W has become a finalist for a giant baseball stadium I think speaks to the fact that local clients can turn to them for bigger commissions than the single-family homes that they've been doing here.

Posted by Brian Libby on March 13, 2006

Interesting. Tried Googling to get more on this... can't find anything. Link?

On a related stadium note... the DC design gets unveiled tomorrow by HOK.

Why can't the Portland firms ever do something like this for a proposed stadium model at home in Portland?

quote:

Originally posted by Knick_9:
Why can't the Portland firms ever do something like this for a proposed stadium model at home in Portland?

The Baseball Group was working with HOK, and therefore, we went with them for the site designs.

That did not mean that HOK would have been the group used, simply that they were working with us.

The design of the new Nationals facility should be a break from the brick and mortar design. Glass, steel, and limestone have been talked about.

By 8am tomorrow there should be images.

Brian Libby is over at www.portlandarchitecture.com, which is an excellent website. This article is currently at the top of their website.