This article is timeless.. from Amerisurv, it takes a close look at the building of the amazing home of the Arizona Cardinals
Someone in the Arizona Cardinals professional football organization has a new responsibility: removing the playing field from the stadium after each game and putting it back in before the next game.
Completed in time for the 2006 football season, the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, is the first venue in the United States to feature a retractable playing field. The natural-turf playing surface will be inside the stadium only on game days. The rest of the time, the field will be outside the stadium, soaking up the Arizona sun and letting the grass grow until the next game. The rollout field is estimated to save $50 million in costs, since it is more economical to move the field than to retract the entire roof to allow the sunshine to reach the grass, and humidity problems inside the stadium are eliminated.
The stadium's nominal seating capacity of 63,500 for the Cardinals' National Football League (NFL) games is expandable up to 73,000 to host marquee games, such as the annual Tostitos Fiesta Bowls, the BCS Championship Bowl (in January, 2007) and the NFL's Super Bowl XLII (in February, 2008).
Removing the field also provides unrestricted access to the stadium's 152,000 ft2 concrete floor, with its embedded utility grid, for events and staging. In this configuration, the stadium can accommodate numerous indoor events including trade shows, conventions, rodeos, concerts and other mega-events, such as the NCAA's Final Four basketball championship game.
Designed by famed architect Peter Eisenman of New Yorkbased Eisenman Architects in conjunction with construction architect HOK Sports, the stadium evokes the form of a barrel cactus and, from some aspects, a coiled snake; both images are true Southwestern icons.
