Stadium Concepts

When Venturi and Scott Brown arrived on campus in late October to take on their first official look around, Bollinger asked them if they would also comment on plans then being developed to expand the football stadium seating.

An all-time demand for renewal from season ticket holders in the spring had resulted in a shortage of tickets for students in the fall. Finding this unaccpetable, Tom Goss, the new athletic director, initiated the expansion project. His plan called for adding five rows around the top on the three rows on the east side, bringing the total seats from 102,501 to 107,701, making the U-M stadium again the biggest in the nation. (Since 1996 it's been eclipsed by Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee.)

Venturi and Scott Brown suggested extending the steel-frame structure of the previous expansion and leaving it exposed as it is now. They envisioned the steel parapet wall rimming the top of the stadium as a decorative "halo." "Color and pattern applied to this metal surface can contribute a decorative and symbolic dimension to the facade," Venturi says. The design concept indicates blue icons, eight or nine feet high, mounted on a maize ground, "which will create a kind of perpetual halo, a seemingly floating ring."

Suggestions for blue icons have included helmets, names of historic players and lines from Michigan songs. VSBA have been researching other ideas as well, such as old University seals at the Bentley Library. Says Venturi of the plan, "It will give a gala quality at the end of campus."