Gies Memorial Stadium

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#76      
Waterski Al
The Arkansas endzone structure concept would fit really well between the brick towers (see Walmart logos). Those are some of the most expensive box seats along with suites. Cool thing is the students get to sit in the bleachers on top of the suites, in addition to their normal location.
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#79      
Fighter of the Nightman
Dan said:
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Random idea while watching this. We should put some relatively inexpensive column wrap around those orange pillars that blow the fire out while the players enter. Anything, big or small, that we can do to continue to emphasize just how unique our stadium’s architecture and backstory are is instantly a good idea. OT, but that’s kind of why I have issues with both the NEZ and (especially) SEZ … they just use rather bland, gray architectural styles. The NEZ has brick in front, but most of the back is boring and modern-looking.

EVERYTHING about Memorial Stadium should look classic, timeless and work to complinent the exceptionally grand architecture of the east and west exteriors!!
 
#80      
Curbelo Fanboy
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Temp bleachers should 110% be put in front of the Horseshoe for the OSU game. The demand would be there, it’s extremely easy, it’d improve the gameday atmosphere and it’s literally been done before!!

MS100_1920s-1940s_1920x1080.jpg
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Agreed. We also have room on the north end to put a small stand of bleachers behind the end zone to cram a couple hundred more people in there. This was fairly common in the early/mid 90's. Of course that was long before that end being closed in with the student section.
 
#81      
Curbelo Fanboy
Mr. Tibbs said:
did Ohio St lower their field in a 9 month time frame or did they play one season somewhere else ?

the water table issue is solvable . we have a world class civil engineering dept to help

playing somewhere else for a season is a bigger issue , imo
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I don't believe OSU ever played somewhere else. Per Wikipedia they removed the track after 1998 & lowered the field the following off season. I do remember OSU playing in Cleveland a time or 2 in the bygone days, but I think that was just a one off & not part of a stadium renovation.
 
#83      
Mr. Tibbs
Curbelo Fanboy said:
I don't believe OSU ever played somewhere else. Per Wikipedia they removed the track after 1998 & lowered the field the following off season. I do remember OSU playing in Cleveland a time or 2 in the bygone days, but I think that was just a one off & not part of a stadium renovation.
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they must have had crews working around the clock to get that done in 8 months

I suppose its possible for us, but not simultaneously with the SEZ
 
#84      
illiniwil
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Random idea while watching this. We should put some relatively inexpensive column wrap around those orange pillars that blow the fire out while the players enter. Anything, big or small, that we can do to continue to emphasize just how unique our stadium’s architecture and backstory are is instantly a good idea. OT, but that’s kind of why I have issues with both the NEZ and (especially) SEZ … they just use rather bland, gray architectural styles. The NEZ has brick in front, but most of the back is boring and modern-looking.

EVERYTHING about Memorial Stadium should look classic, timeless and work to complinent the exceptionally grand architecture of the east and west exteriors!!
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nope, stone looks like stone until when its rolled around on wheels. then it looks like what it is. stone looking mylar stuck to plywood. nothing complimentary about it. like virginia tech's limestone rock looking helmets from a few years ago. you can only replicate brick and stone details exactly with those materials and
be willing to pay that cost. cheapen it and it will look cheap.
 
#85      
Fighter of the Nightman
I was thinking more of that picture of MS I posted above (turns out today is a Loyalty Saga day for me! :ROFLMAO: ), and I have a bit of an architectural question. From certain angles, it becomes very clear that the Horseshoe is super out of place compared to how the West Main and East Main stands circle the field, and we all know this. However, for some visual reference:

ATH1920_Facilities_MemorialStadium_01.jpg

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As the first photo shows, the first row of the Horseshoe is so much farther from the field of play than the east/west sides that it is almost hilarious. As the second photo shows, the slope of the stands in the Horseshoe also appears to be noticeably less steep than the "matching" sections in East/West Main. However, when looking at the third photo, I kind of started to wonder something. I've seen some here express a desire to maintain the general setup of the Horseshoe and simply make it better - bring the stands down to field level, add an upper deck, maybe make the slope steeper, etc. However, would this be a huge logistical issue if we don't want to cover up the beautiful SW and SE towers?

If you look at the sections of West Main in the third photo, they end at about the same point past the tunnels as the Horseshoe sections ... the Horseshoe sections just go back at a much stranger angle, which allows them to go way closer to the street and take up more space "horizontally" than they do "vertically." If we just scrapped the actual Horseshoe seats and put in stands that were as steep as West/East Main but that kept that horseshoe-like shape, wouldn't we run into issues of covering up the towers? I feel like that is why the last SEZ rendering we got in 2016 scrapped the entire Horseshoe and had stands that angled toward the towers on the side ... but the structure itself is more of a "squared-in" design to match the "straight" nature of the east and west stands that are more of a giant rectangle than a bowl shape.

base-jpg.43692


TL;DR

I'm not an architect, so maybe I am off-base here. However, the west and east sides of our stadium were NOT built with a bowl shape but rather as "rectangular" stands that are parallel with the field for the entire sideline; the NEZ now follows the same model. I feel like part of the reason the Horseshoe is so weird and out of place is that it is the only part of the stadium that has this "rounded" design, and it's visually jarring and unnecessarily far from the field. I can't help but feel like any good SEZ design would need "square in" the stadium, and the shape of the Horseshoe needs to be scrapped.
 
#86      
Fighter of the Nightman
illiniwil said:
nope, stone looks like stone until when its rolled around on wheels. then it looks like what it is. stone looking mylar stuck to plywood. nothing complimentary about it. like virginia tech's limestone rock looking helmets from a few years ago. you can only replicate brick and stone details exactly with those materials and
be willing to pay that cost. cheapen it and it will look cheap.
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Hey FTR, I would obviously prefer we just get some actually stone pillars for this! The orange ones look kind of tacky, IMO. I only came up with the column wrap idea because I'm sure someone at the DIA would nix the idea to pinch some pennies, haha.
 
#87      
Mr. Tibbs
Fighter of the Nightman said:
ATH1920_Facilities_MemorialStadium_01.jpg

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.

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I'm not an architect, so maybe I am off-base here. However, the west and east sides of our stadium were NOT built with a bowl shape but rather as "rectangular" stands that are parallel with the field for the entire sideline; the NEZ now follows the same model. I feel like part of the reason the Horseshoe is so weird and out of place is that it is the only part of the stadium that has this "rounded" design, and it's visually jarring and unnecessarily far from the field. I can't help but feel like any good SEZ design would need "square in" the stadium, and the shape of the Horseshoe needs to be scrapped.
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disagree 1000%
Im not an architect either, but its a passion of mine anyway.

With all due respect, you are much too into symmetry and "matching" , concepts that just dont work in the world of stadiums.
We arent building it like a house, to be able to sell it one day down ther road, we just need it to fulfill our needs the next 50 years.
and its not going to be around for 3000 years like the pyramids. No one will judge us harshly if it works for us the next 50-75 years
 
#88      
fuddrules
Marshall_Lucky said:
A bit off topic, wasn't the new improved in stadium wifi supposed to be fully operational in time for the USC game? I was still not able to connect to anything from the West balcony seats
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Shhhh. I'm not sure you're supposed to ask about that. It's been awfully quiet from the DIA.

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#89      
CaptainCrutch
Mr. Tibbs said:
did Ohio St lower their field in a 9 month time frame or did they play one season somewhere else ?

the water table issue is solvable . we have a world class civil engineering dept to help

playing somewhere else for a season is a bigger issue , imo
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We’ll just move the games to McKinley field where Central High School gets to occasionally play. The locals would LOVE that lol
 
#91      
CaptainCrutch
Mr. Tibbs said:
disagree 1000%
Im not an architect either, but its a passion of mine anyway.

With all due respect, you are much too into symmetry and "matching" , concepts that just dont work in the world of stadiums.
We arent building it like a house, to be able to sell it one day down ther road, we just need it to fulfill our needs the next 50 years.
and its not going to be around for 3000 years like the pyramids. No one will judge us harshly if it works for us the next 50-75 years
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Disagree 10,000%! I feel like this is similar to the “I don’t care if we wear green and purple as long as we WIN” rhetoric that is super annoying.

Yes, it’s okay to care about the design/aesthetics of your program. No, nobody will judge us, but many of us will get more enjoyment out of it if the design (that we have 100MM to play with) is a home run.

Also, you know why people who aren’t cubs/Red Sox fans like going to those games anyway? Cuz the parks are awesome.
 
#92      
Fighter of the Nightman
Mr. Tibbs said:
disagree 1000%
Im not an architect either, but its a passion of mine anyway.

With all due respect, you are much too into symmetry and "matching" , concepts that just dont work in the world of stadiums.
We arent building it like a house, to be able to sell it one day down ther road, we just need it to fulfill our needs the next 50 years.
and its not going to be around for 3000 years like the pyramids. No one will judge us harshly if it works for us the next 50-75 years
Click to expand...
I'm not really saying that I don't want to maintain the round shape because of how it looks, though. I'm questioning if we can fix the issues with the Horseshoe (mainly that it is not steep/tall enough and it is too far away from the field) without scrapping the round shape. In other words, given that the rest of our stadium is decidedly NOT round, it might be difficult to fix these issues without scrapping the current SEZ.
 
#93      
Mr. Tibbs
a really good architect can pretty much figure out a way to get what you need/want and do it in a way that looks awesome - but seldom will it be symmetrical or “matching” existing things . but that doesn’t mean it won’t be complimentary or simpatico with existing
 
#94      
illiniwil
the horseshoe is a trademark and it does "fit" into the composition of the stadium and the campus, it is a terminus to the stadium and focuses
the field as its center point. however it was built to enclose a running track that is not longer there and needs a fresh look. the architectural
challenge (i am an architect who has never done a football stadium) is to somehow enclose the south EZ with a structure that at the same time
references the original horseshoe, pushes it toward the field and raises it up. lowering the turf el. seems doable and makes the lowest 5-10 rows
much better for viewing. i dont know if the relative cost of this move is worth the pay off. seats twice as high in the new "horsehoe" seems
as hard to sell as the corners of the east balcony. specialty boxes or group sales make some sense there.
 
#95      
fuddrules
illiniwil said:
i dont know if the relative cost of this move is worth the pay off. seats twice as high in the new "horsehoe" seems
as hard to sell as the corners of the east balcony. specialty boxes or group sales make some sense there.
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If done like Iowa's NEZ - I think, once people saw what they were getting, seats could sell for a similar price to the west balcony.

A big problem at MS is trying to get in and out of rows. You see that in ticket selections. No one wants to sit in the middle of the sections. It's brutal for everyone to get in/out. I'm 6' and my knees are directly behind the back of the person in the row in front of me and we occasionally knock into each other.

You can see here a much larger area to get in and out of the rows at Iowa. In this pic, you have seats but when I sat in Iowa's NEZ, I sat on bench seating. Same distance between rows with bench seating as well. I believe I was higher than what is in this picture. But you can see the game quite well, as you can see, it's not a bad view. At least far better than the current SEZ at Memorial Stadium. I'd strongly consider "mini" premium seating if MS SEZ was done like this vs. sitting like a sardine at the 50-yard line at MS.

194627a2-b239-414f-8e0f-90bb608392ca-190809-Kinnick_NEZ-011.JPG


Edit: Found one more pic similar to where I sat and I could see the game just fine:


10ff643a-6a06-4487-bcc5-d922363099db-190809-Kinnick_NEZ-047.JPG
 
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#96      
Fighter of the Nightman
I wanted to throw out another post sort of explaining the conversation I started on scrapping the Horseshoe. There is a TL;DR at the bottom where I try to rephrase what I meant, but also ... here's a bunch of words and pictures. :ROFLMAO: First off, I am not sure I think the Horseshoe shape is as integral to the design of Memorial Stadium as others, given it looks like it was tacked on to go around the track and provide a few more seats, as seen with the awkward dividing wall in this older photo ... East Main looks a lot more "planned" or "permanent" than what got built in the SEZ:

WEB_MS_1925Homecoming_CoUIArchives_1000px.jpg


I would argue it has always been the ugly stepchild of the stadium, and it could have originally been seen as a placeholder for something grander in the future. With that said, and as I mentioned above, I am NOT against keeping the horseshoe shape if it can work alongside fixing the current issues! If someone assured me it could, I wouldn't favor another design over a renovation that kept the horseshoe shape in general.

However, can we all agree that it would be a massive miss if any serious money were spent on an SEZ renovation that didn't (1) substantially increase the height of the stands (which would necessarily require a steeper incline to the seats!!) and (B) move the first row of fans way closer to the field? JMO, but a proper college football stadium is "closed in" as much as possible in a way that maintains architectural integrity and helps to trap noise/improve the home field advantage. That doesn't have to be a bowl or any other shape; there are creative ways to do it! However, I would argue that it is not debatable that one current glaring issue with our otherwise A+ stadium is that we go from this height on the east side (which looks becoming of a Blue Blood stadium)...
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... to this height right next to it, which looks (and I am in no way joking here) like a Texas high school stadium in isolation...
2025.10.2 Pic.png


Probably beating my point to death here, but I think this third photo provides a good angle to see what a visually jarring shift takes place ... it just looks like we stopped building the stadium prematurely and the Horseshoe was supposed to also have a balcony to match the east side and complete the look of the stadium:
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I've posted a few mockups before where we simply bring the Horseshoe stands down to field level (i.e., fill in the silly gap in front) and add more seats on back (but extending back at the same angle). An example is below, and it does look like a substantial improvement from this angle:
Remodel 2.png


What I worry about with this, though, is that we get a "Rose Bowl scenario," where the stands look cool and imposing from the air, but the slope is so absurdly gradual that they are doing an extremely poor job at providing height and trapping noise. Example of two angles of the Rose Bowl below:

Looks huge...
rose-bowl-college-football-championship-pasadena-california.jpg


Doesn't look quite as huge, lol...
RB.png


An opposite example is Tennessee's Neyland Stadium - almost always ranked among the best home atmospheres in the nation. While it still looks like a very big stadium (because it is!), you could be forgiven for thinking that the upper deck doesn't hold THAT many seats from the aerial view ... in fact, from this angle isolated sections of the upper deck look similar to the Horseshoe as far as number of rows and such...
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... but because it is one of the steepest inclines in college football stadiums, the view from the field is imposing and super cool:
8141a84b406731dfbd21cc8fd2d1ff6afe3464a8b11f569b8e46a07a9a511c97.jpg


We don't just need more seats in the Horseshoe ... hell, it seats the same number of fans as Iowa's much more impressive north end zone! We need those seats higher up in the air to trap noise and look intimidating.

TL;DR yet again, lol...

Let's say we keep the horseshoe shape, which I am again fine with in theory - maybe we add some seats in front, add some seats in back and sprinkle in some cool suites. My question is can we realistically do this while fundamentally re-angling the slope of the seats? Because I think we HAVE to do that and/or add an upper deck. We just simply need more height in the SEZ than can be provided by adding seats at the current slope to the current Horseshoe. If we can tear out the existing seats and rebuild a "Horseshoe 2.0" that is at a taller/steeper angle AND doesn't cover up the two towers in the corner (two crown jewels of the stadium that need prioritized), I am all for that!! I was just starting to look at pictures and wonder if that was going to be possible.
 
#97      
illiniwil
'i don't know if the relative cost of this move is worth the pay off." my comment wasn't clear, but this quote was
specifically related to the lowering of the field elevation comment. i like it, just not sure how it pays off. regarding the
horseshoe i am all for an expansion of seats closer to the field to add to the noise level and intimacy in the south
endzone. perhaps a second level and/or closed boxes for large groups below and around the video board in whatever
configuration. On the exterior, im not terribly concerned how it stacks up against the east and west grandstands
because of how you view and approach the stadium from long distances on the east and west. i would think that a
lower seating tray that visually separates the taller main stands of both sides .


fuddrules said:
If done like Iowa's NEZ - I think, once people saw what they were getting, seats could sell for a similar price to the west balcony.

A big problem at MS is trying to get in and out of rows. You see that in ticket selections. No one wants to sit in the middle of the sections. It's brutal for everyone to get in/out. I'm 6' and my knees are directly behind the back of the person in the row in front of me and we occasionally knock into each other.

You can see here a much larger area to get in and out of the rows at Iowa. In this pic, you have seats but when I sat in Iowa's NEZ, I sat on bench seating. Same distance between rows with bench seating as well. I believe I was higher than what is in this picture. But you can see the game quite well, as you can see, it's not a bad view. At least far better than the current SEZ at Memorial Stadium. I'd strongly consider "mini" premium seating if MS SEZ was done like this vs. sitting like a sardine at the 50-yard line at MS.
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#100      
IlliniCaboose
The Venn Diagram between these people and the "bring back the Chief or I'll never spend another dollar on U of I athletics" is a perfect circle.
 
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