Eugene
In a video that shows the Oregon Ducks football team being introduced this past summer to their new Football Performance Center at the University of Oregon, player after player has the same gobsmacked look on his face. One says, “Are you kidding me, bro? Legit.” Their delight in the building, by ZGF Architects with interior architect Firm 151 and landscape architect PLACE studio, continues: “Unreal. This place is crazy. I can't even . . . There are no words.” “Unbelievable.” “Unimaginable.”
The Ducks are not only reacting to the architecture—stacked and staggered boxes clad in fritted glass, steel and aluminum plate, and black granite (there is almost no facade that doesn't look three-dimensional)—but also the opulence. This is with good reason, as the luxurious building was paid for by the Phit Foundation, which is run by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny Knight. They told the architects, “Do it better,” according to Gene Sandoval, design partner at ZGF, and flew some of the design team across the country and overseas to look at sports facilities, museums, and halls of fame, as well as to source materials. From custom Nepali rugs to slate showers, to furniture tested to withstand the weight of a dozing 300-pound lineman, no object or surface received standardized treatment. (The cost of the building is confidential. Some stories have reported $68 million, but ZGF could not confirm the figure, nor speculate on how it was derived.)
The football center, meant to support well-rounded athletes and streamline their diet, strength training, recreation, and game strategy under the watchful eyes of coaches, completes a trilogy of university buildings that ZGF and Firm 151 have designed for the Knights' foundation, the firms' real client—the buildings only get handed over to the school once they are complete. The architects' relationship with the Knights began eight years ago when Sandoval and Firm 151's Randy Stegmeier—who studied architecture at U of O—designed Oregon's athletic-medicine facility and, in 2010, completed an academic center for athletes. Phil Knight is an Oregon alumnus too.
Dreamlike as its luxuries may appear to student athletes, the 145,000-square-foot complex bears down on the earth with its muscular form. It's a meticulously built and elegant fortress, bold enough to grab drivers' attention as they whiz by on their way to Autzen Stadium, the Ducks' home-game turf, and refined enough to hug a new zenlike plaza, with gurgling pools of water to its east. (The architects also re-skinned two of the center's neighbors in O-punched box-ribbed metal panels and wood composite, visually tying the buildings together.) “The massing of the building was about movement, as when a football player is grabbing a ball and running back,” says ZGF's Robert Snyder, project manager, who also studied architecture at Oregon.
The six-story, L-shaped structure is really two buildings connected by a three-level glass sky-bridge. The first building is composed of two long bar volumes, one sliding off the other like a precarious Jenga piece. They separate the new plaza from the practice fields. The second is a boxier complex to the north in which the architects placed the more cerebral portions of the program, away from the adrenaline-charged practice fields.
The long bar volumes contain a two-story weight room with custom machines and a mezzanine-level sprinting track; a view of the fields keeps motivation high. The upper bar contains coaches' offices, a players' lounge, and recruitment rooms. Throughout the center, the architects worked with Todd Van Horne, a designer at Nike, and exhibit designer Gallagher & Associates; the interiors are a balance of pop graphics, accents in the Ducks' signature greens and yellows, and a motif best described as Dad's den—if Dad lined his walls in football leather and sourced his recliner from Poltrona Frau.
Sandoval and his team spent months studying the players' schedules and translated that knowledge into the sequence of spaces, the goal being to move players through their day as quickly as possible. Aside from a ground-floor lobby meant for the public and fans, the rest of the other, squarer volume—the “teaching box”—is for athletes. Beyond the lobby are the team's walnut-paneled dining room and the cafeteria. In an aggressive take on classic diner décor, neon letters spell out EAT YOUR ENEMIES AND THE OTHER FOOD GROUPS. The players' locker room on the third floor (the “soul” of the building, according to Jeff Hawkins, the senior associate athletic director of football administration and operations) is fitted out like a spa, with Carrara marble, a barbershop, and solid-surface lockers bearing the silhouettes of uniformed players. The room's air supply is exhausted through the lockers, providing airflow and controlling odors. Climbing farther upstairs, the fourth and fifth floors house lecture-style meeting rooms for the offense and defense connected by a double-story atrium. A two-level walnut-paneled theater spanning these floors has a view to the east and Autzen Stadium.
Since its debut, the football center has elicited a mixture of awe and cynicism in the press, much of it about the professionalization and monetization of student athletics. Heard more than once during a recent tour of the building was the refrain that the Ducks may not see another facility as grand again, even if they go pro. As writer Drew Magary wrote for the sports blog Deadspin, “If I played for Oregon, I would never wanna graduate.”
People
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Architect:
Personnel in architect's firm who should receive special credit: Interior architect: firm151/ 1223 SW Washington Street, Suite 300 / 503.863.2590
Randy Stegmeier, Principal Interior Designer, AIA Engineer(s): KPFF (structural & civil); Integral Group (mechanical); Sparling (Electrical)
Consultant(s): Lighting: Sparling / Candela Acoustical: Altermatt Associates Other: Hammer Design Consultants Associates, Inc. (food service consultant); Todd Van Horne (environmental graphics); Charlie Marrow Productions (3D sound); Gallagher Designs (exhibit design), Jack Aguirre (graffiti artist) General contractor: Hoffman Construction Company
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CAD system, project management, or other software used: Size: 145,000 square feet Cost: withheld Completion date: August 2013 |
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Structural system
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Metal doors: Wood doors: ARTEK, Beaverton, OR Sliding doors: Panda Windows & Doors, Record-USA
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Hardware Closers: CR Laurence, Dorma Exit devices: Ingersoll-Rand, Von Duprin Pulls: CR Laurence/ Sugatsune/ Linnea Security devices: Ingersoll-Rand, Von Duprin Other special hardware: Tice Industries (custom bathroom hardware)
Interior finishes Cabinetwork and custom woodwork: Lamer Woodworking/ Sandy, Oregon; ARTEK/ Beaverton, Oregon and Calgary, CA Paints and stains: Sherwin Williams, Rodda Paint Wall coverings: Custom [materials: Glass/ Custom Football Leather] Paneling: Custom, metal and wood Plastic laminate: Nevamar/ Formica/ Abet Laminati Solid surfacing: Corian/ Hi-Macs Special surfacing: Pental Granite + Marble [carrara reception desk] Custom exterior stone engraving: Oregon Memorial Custom external graphic metal panel [Player’s Walk]: Mid-Valley Metals, FM Sheet Metal Inc. Custom glass graphic panels: Pacific Window Tint Custom graphic magnetic glass panels and mirrors: Moonshadow Custom graphic wall covering: Infinity Images
Floor and wall tile: Resilient flooring: MONDO Carpet: Bigelow/ Mohawk Group, Astro Turf Raised flooring: ASM Modular Systems Special interior finishes unique to this project: Football Leather by NIKE Laser engraving: Green Demon Interior signage: Tube Art Group, ES&A
Furnishings Reception furniture: B+B Italia/ ARTEK/ Sun Valley Granite Fixed seating: Poltrona Frau [theaters, media room] Chairs: Herman Miller/B+B Italia/ Zanotta/ Poltrona Frau/ VITRA Tables: Custom [Lamer Woodworking]/ Karimoku/ B+B Italia/ CP/ Thonet Upholstery: B+B Italia/ Zanotta/ Poltrona Frau/ Maharam/ NIKE custom football leather [media room walls]/ Fitzfelt
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Lighting Downlights: RSA, Focal Point, FLOS, Portfolio Task lighting: FLOS Exterior: Ligman
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