Sean O's Fantasy Ballparks

[Jeeper]

Make sure you fill the seats with guys in white suits and lots of pretty models.

:-D

[lavi]

I'm sure somebody else has to have an idea. Anybody???

[Sean O]

Just an update to the park, here's some photos:

As far as the park, I took your suggestions lavi, since I actually really thought it was a good idea. In right field, there is a 15' raised walkway area between the right field wall and the water, and the bullpens are contained within this area. However, there is an additional 5' overhang over the field, along with a concrete support area at a 45 degree angle directly underneath it. So, essentially it's possible for a home run hit at a high angle to land where the right fielder could have caught it, directly in front of the bullpens.

I haven't started any work on the outside facade or anything around the park, as I'm next going to try to tackle the roof area. The entire park will be encased in glass above the seating area, which will also retract when the roof is opened. I've tried to include as much shade as possible, and the overhanging upper deck should help that a lot. All told, i'm shooting for around 38,000 seats, since the Marlins are a real small-market team.

Dimensions:

LF: 315' - 3' wall

LF Center at bleacher start: 375' - 3' wall

LF Center: 375' - 3' wall

CF1: 415' - 3' wall

CF: 410' - 3' wall

CF2: 408' - 25' wall

RF: 322' - 25' wall

RF Center: 330'

Comments and suggestions appreciated, especially about what you'd like to see outside the park, or in dead-center field.

[sdoyle7798]

Sort of a Peske's (sp?) in left field huh... :spin:

I really like the idea. Can't wait for the finished product.

[lavi]

Wow, that looks really great. I like the dimentions to. You could put some palm trees in center field, maybe a fountian. Or perhaps take a bit from the proposed Oakland park and put a building out there. It could be the team offices.

[Thepat5678]

This is an image of an artist rendition of what they want Marlins Stadium to look like if it helps give you any ideas at all.

[Sean O]

Hey all-

So, I've begun a new design project in Vectorworks, and it's somewhat different from my previous projects. While past designs have attempted to create the best baseball parks possible, in this one I'm trying to create a multi-use stadium, like the much maligned Three Rivers/Riverfront/Veterans Stadium trio, but one that fits both sports equally well and is an aesthetically appealing and comfortable place to watch the event. To facilitate this, I have combined the setups for Mile High Stadium and Aloha Stadium, as follows (thanks Andrew Clem for Mile High):

As you see here, the left stands at Mile High were designed to move backwards to accomodate the baseball diamond without running into a horrorshow like the LA Coliseum. For football, it slid forwards, creating a much tighter area. Now, Aloha Stadium is somewhat different, but one of the true brilliant ideas in stadium design:

baseball:

football:

layout:

Here, you can see how entire sections of the stadium are designed to slide into a different position, meaning fans are much closer to the action, and it feels like the designer took both into consideration, unlike the Metrodome or Kingdome.

Now, back to this project. As you can see in the screenshots below, the left and right stands pivot around 21 degrees to join with the end zone / home plate seating complex. Because of the angle of the seating, the farthest edges of the two stands actually form the wall for the baseball park, while seats extend out to fill the curved area in foul ground to bring fans closer. Here are the screenshots:

Football configuration:

Baseball configuration:

Combined setup:

And two images of the baseball setup:

I'll be back with more information later and more pictures in time. I'm enjoying this project because it took weeks of sketching and consideration to make it feasible, and I can truly understand why the multi-use stadiums of the past have turned out poorly due to the sheer number of requirements.

I hope you enjoy.

[Kriegz]

Looking good!

[Bama]

for the Marlins Park, i think a section of the outfield should have a low wall, and no seats behind it providing for full view of teh surrounding area.

[Sean O]

New renders as of 11/7:

Football:

Now, an explanation. My overarching goal for this stadium was to design a place that fit both football and baseball equally well, and that means the attendance must reflect that situation. So, in this park, in addition to the two seating sections that swivel (see above), a diagonal part of each of these sections will move backwards 150' to drastically lower the attendance figure and make the park a far more intimate place for baseball.

Here's the diagram:

As you can see, those diagonal wedge-shaped sections move backwards as the red arrows show, while the teal lines show the sightlines for the stadium, so the removed sections are not visible at any time to those in the stadium.

Here are the renders:

Here is the stadium configured for soccer:

As you can see, the center field bleacher section is black for the hitter's eye, and this section is much smaller than the other 3 sides. Directly behind the bleachers is an executive / luxury box suite area with the jumbotron (100' x 50', slightly smaller than Rogers Centre) and football / baseball scoreboard directly in its center.

here are the dimensions of the ballpark:

As far as amenities outside of the park, I'm not sure how much I'm going to add to the park at this point, so this may pretty much be it. I would love any opinions people have about the design or execution, or if anything isn't abundantly clear.

Thanks.

[Pirate]

How would you implement this into MVP or does this have nothing to do with MVP? I like the rendrings though. When I was 14 I made my own stadium out of styroboard/corkboard it was 1/32 scale I think. I loved that something fierce.

Stadiums are the coolest thing in the world.

[Sean O]

Yeah, they really are.

This is intended to be completely seperate from MVP, and are intended for a portfolio I'm amassing to try to get some sort of architecture or drafting position. I enjoy thinking of different solutions to problems, and this one has easily been the most difficult yet. Since you're into stadium design, you may be interested in how I came to this point.

I started off with something pretty much mirroring Mile High, with two different rectangular stands sections that could move backwards out of the way depending on the situation. However, this never really worked out correctly because even if the stands were moved backwards, they were still in the line-of-sight of all the patrons, and I didn't want some massive, ugly section of the stadium sitting out there. So I figured maybe it would be possible for these stands to slide backwards and then behind other sections, but this didn't really seem feasible.

From here, I figured it might be possible to have a completely circular area with PSCSLD (paired swivelable circular section lower deck), and the two outer sections could simply slide around behind the immovable sections, thus creating a smaller seating capacity that could adjust depending on how many seats were required. However, the geometry for this solution was a mess, and it was an aesthetic nightmare.

Nothing really happened until, as usual, I was surfing around for misc. ballpark info and I ran into a description of Aloha Stadium, and as I listed above, I was really impressed with the swiveling system. In my first real attempt at actually drafting this out however, I was approaching it the wrong way and couldn't get the dimensions accurate, since I was still trying to slide the sections instead of pivoting on one central point. Then, once I stepped back and figured out the dimensioning I managed to get everything to fit correctly, whether it's baseball, football, soccer, or concerts.

I still have a couple of issues about this design, namely the amount of foul ground and whether it is personalized enough to keep it from becoming old and stale like the cookie cutters. The field location for baseball can easily be moved to the corners to make everything more intimate, but I'm not sure about how to make it really feel like a baseball-only park. I guess I'll have to work on that some more, but I'm hoping the similarities to Kauffman will mean it will maintain as a great place to watch sports for some years to come.

[Sean O]

New project, started from scratch after the hard drive crash:

[HardcoreLegend]

Is it wrong of me to be totally confused as to a)how you got that graphic like that and what program you used?

[Sean O]

B). Vectorworks, it's a drafting program. Sadly this has nothing to do with MVP.

a). short answer: Lots of staring at the screen, and yelling. long answer: gradually built it up from a few vertices and some ideas i've been kicking around, then figured out a good lighting scheme to make it look pretty.

[UncleMo]

Did you ever release any stadiums in the past that were fantasy for MLB? How in the world did I miss this entire thread?!

[Sean O]

[AstroEric]

Was there ever a winner to your fantasy ballpark contest?

[NYM]

Man I would love to know the program the designers at HOK use to make there ballparks. Citi Field looks so lifelike!

[philliesphan18]

Just wondering - I couldn't find any of your fantasy stadiums in the downloads section. Were they ever finish and released?