Mired in a Sea of Parking, Dodger Stadium Architects Design a More Urbane Experience

The Planning Report features the second in a series of interviews with Los Angeles Dodgers management and design team as the owners rush to finish a series of improvements and renovations ahead of opening day. Brenda Levin of Levin & Associates Architects, Tommy Quirk of DAIQ, and Mia Lehrer of Mia Lehrer + Associates were charged with executing more than $100 million in improvements and enhancements over the course of several months. The Planning Report sat down with Tommy Quirk to discuss how improving the fan experience became the central ethos of the project, even in their approach to redesigning the team clubhouse. 

An interactive graphic in the Los Angeles Times details the ambitious renovation project.

DAIQ Architects has partnered extensively with Janet Marie Smith, now Senior Vice President of Planning and Development for the Los Angeles Dodgers, on projects ranging from Boston's Fenway Park to Atlanta's Turner Field. In all cases, Smith and Quirk's teams have focused on the relationship between the stadium and the its surrounding urban fabric. In the case of Fenway Park, the stadium is set in the middle of a dense urban landscape, and walking through the Fenway neighborhood becomes part of the cherished baseball experience. While the Chavez Ravine may feel relatively removed from Los Angeles' neighborhoods, Dodgers architects examined ways of translating that sense of pedestrian space to the stadium's context. 

As Quirk notes, "The team is the primary focus of the fan experience; the fans are here to see the ball team. But then the experiences around the game are basically what we were charged with addressing. In every case, we were asked (even our firm that’s doing mostly work related to the ball team) to think about all of the spaces and the procession of spaces as you enter a facility."