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city of Nashville has long been famous for Country Music. For years,
the industry's brightest stars have composed and played in Music City,
USA.
The new Nashville Arena opened downtown in December 1996. The city and
its design team - led by Kansas City-based HOK Sports Facilities Group
- have created a magnum opus of their own. If, as Longfellow wrote,
music is the "universal language of mankind" then the Nashville
Arena sings to us all.
Winning Over the Jury
In 1993, HOK Sport teamed with local A/E Hart Freeland Roberts for a
design competition against four prominent arena design firms. The city's
diverse blue ribbon selection panel included architectural professors
and local architects, Country Music star Vince Gill and the NBA's Anthony
Mason who played college basketball at Tennessee State University. New
York City-based architect Hugh Hardy chaired the jury.
HOK's team submission was selected by the jury as the unanimous winner.
It acknowledged the city's musical roots by positioning the Nashville
Arena on the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue with its axis centred
on the front doors of the historic Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand
Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974.
HOK's was the only design that proposed fitting the Arena into a two-block
site across the street from Nashville's Convention Center. "By
orienting the building in a footprint that allowed us to keep Fifth
Avenue open, we maintained the urban gridwork so important for the circulation
of people and vehicles," explains HOK Sport's senior vice president
and project principal Ben Barnert.
HOK also provided a master plan illustrating how the facility could
catalyse new entertainment-related development in an entire section
of downtown. Today, that revival is in full swing.
A Nashville Icon
In 1993 Nashville's city council and the citizens of Davidson County,
Tennessee, approved a property tax increase that enabled the city to
sell $120 million in bonds to finance the Nashville Arena. In return,
the city wanted a state-of-the art facility that would stimulate downtown
growth and give Nashville an edge in attracting professional sports
franchises, top-notch entertainment acts and major conferences. The
city also wanted a landmark building that people across the world would
identify with Nashville, much like the Opera House in Sydney.
The Building as Performer
HOK's design was inspired by Nashville's image as Music City, USA and
the desire for an icon facility. The arena accommodates sports such
as basketball and hockey but the emphasis is on music - rare among the
new generation of US arenas. This is reflected in the building geometry
and in features that combine to portray the exuberance and vitality
of a performance in action. "Without being too literal, we tried
to have some fun with the concept of music," says Barnert.
Abstractly, the building's form in plain view resembles a French horn,
with the 1,400-square metre rehearsal hall serving as the horn-shaped
element. A parking lot south of the rehearsal hall was proposed to be
graded like a drive-in theatre to evoke images of sound waves being
emitted from the horn. The arena's curved roof rises towards Broadway
creating an elliptical shape while also enabling more seating opposite
the end stage.
A 93 metre, 22 storey broadcast tower - symbolic of Grand Old Opry radio
broadcasts - marks the arena district in the Nashville skyline. The
tower's shape - cylindrical at the top and elliptical at the base -
evokes images of an angled spotlight. Within its base, the glass and
steel spotlight tower accommodates a visitors' centre at street level
and a 70-seat theatre on the second level. A music bar and observation
deck are planned for the third level. An elevated walkway links the
tower to the arena's suite level.
As patrons approach the arena's main entrance, a steel canopy gives
the illusion of being on stage as light cannons search the sky. Catwalks
and lighting grids within the entry vestibule, along with a main marquee
reconfigured to reflect the mood of each event, help create a theatrical
environment.
Major concourse walls facing the entry plaza are transparent, offering
a glimpse into the inner works of a performance by revealing the movement
of people and cascading stair elements. The main concourse features
a terrazzo floor with a pattern resembling a guitar neck. Thin bronze
dividing strips in the deep blue terrazzo take the form of the guitar
strings, while 76cm white terrazzo discs (replaceable with commemorative
discs for special events) serve as the fret markers. At the lower suite
level, balcony recesses give the impression of a piano keyboard.
"We viewed most of the main concourse as being on stage,"
says Barnert. "The colours used throughout the arena are fairly
neutral - beige, grey and deep blue terrazzo, off-white tile walls with
occasional splashes of colour. The overall effect is an environment
that is light and elegant."
Throughout this main concourse, theatrical lighting creates an atmosphere
in which patrons experience the sensation of being on or back stage.
"We made it exciting by using coloured gels and varying the play
of lights," adds Barnert. The south part of the concourse, considered
back stage, is marked by the overhead structure painted black with theatrical
fixtures attached to aluminium trusses.
Horseshoe-Shaped Seating Bowl
Most of today's new arenas feature oval-shaped, symmetrical seating
bowls. At the Nashville Arena, however, a horseshoe-shaped bowl shifts
the focus to end-stage events. While this asymmetrical, theatrical-style
seating configuration allows concert-goers to feel a sense of intimacy
so important in a music hall, it also equips sports fans with seats
close to the action. Upper-tier seats opposite the end-stage are slightly
higher and the roof slopes toward the stage.
The 20 second-level luxury suites, all of which are sold, face the front
or side of the stage for concerts. For now, the back area that would
typically accommodate suites houses a 350-seat Arena Club that offers
a great view for sporting events. When Nashville attracts an NHL or
NBA franchise, the arena has the capacity for 12 more suites on this
lower suite level and 32 additional suites and intermixed with the present
2,000 premium seats at the club level.
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The arena has
20 suites with space
for an additional 44.
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The arena can seat 20,000 people for concerts, 19,000 for basketball
and 18,000 for hockey. All four levels of seating are accessible to
people with disabilities.
Acoustical Balance
HOK worked with the acoustical consultants Wrightson Johnson Haddon
& Williams of Dallas to equip the arena with acoustics optimised
for concert music while also accommodating the crowd noise essential
for sporting events. "The two types of venues are so different,"
notes Bob Jalilvand, an architect who moved to Nashville from Kansas
City to spend two and a half years as HOK Sport's on-site representative.
"In sporting venues you typically want a lot of live sound - echoes
and roars - but in concerts you want clear, crisp sound without too
much reflection or reverberation."
To achieve the best acoustics for music, the team specified many sound-absorptive
materials, including upholstered seats, sprayed-on acoustical treatment
over the stage, fin baffles to improve bass sounds, a perforated metal
halo ceiling with a sound blanket and baffles within the roof structure
and sound blankets in walls at the back of the upper seating. Strict
acoustic requirements influenced the design of the building's mechanical
systems.
Convention Center Link
A pedestrian walkway beneath Broadway links the arena with the Nashville
Convention Center and an adjacent hotel. "This underground connection
helps the city attract major conventions and events by supplementing
the convention centre's capacity with the arena's 1,400 square metres
of meeting rooms and 930 square metres of exhibition space," says
Jalilvand. The first 12 rows around the floor of the lower seating level
retract, providing an additional clear floor space of nearly 4,100 square
metres for exhibits.
Facilities
Though it is still shell space, HOK's design calls for a 1,400-square-metre
rehearsal hall that resembles a horn from plan view. The sound stage
quality space will be large enough to accommodate a full concert stage
set up so that performers can practice, plan tours and record music
videos or commercials. A TV production studio will be built next to
the facility. Space is set aside backstage for visitors to observe the
rehearsals. The hall could also be used as practice courts for a basketball
team or to host large dinners and fund-raisers.
An 370-car parking garage on the south elevation of the arena provides
access to the main concourse, lower suite club level and upper concourse.
Another 650-car parking garage is being built across Sixth Avenue and
the two garages will be connected at their top levels. Downtown Nashville's
existing parking structures and surface lots provide 12,500 more spaces
within one kilometre of the arena.
 The
arena's roof curves
up towards Broadway creating
an elliptical shape and
enabling more seating
opposite the stage.
Revitalising Nashville
The arena project occupies approximately one third of an 11 hectare
district previously dominated by small scale brick buildings, warehouses
and parking lots. It has helped catalyse a revitalisation in its neighbourhood
at the edge of downtown. "The city leaders had great insight about
Nashville being ripe for expansion," observes Barnert. Major chain
restaurants such as the Wildhorse Saloon, the Hard Rock Cafe, Planet
Hollywood and Hooter's have opened in the vicinity as have an abundance
of smaller nightclub venues, restaurants and shops.
With this urban resurgence, a Summer Lights festival has been moved
from the county to downtown. Also, each Thursday night during the summer
finds several thousand people downtown 'Dancing in the District' as
a barge equipped with live bands pulls up along the Cumberland River.
"The district anchored by the arena is attracting people from the
suburbs back to downtown Nashville," says Jalilvand, "which
was part of the plan."
NFL Stadium
The area's new developments include another major sports facility designed
by HOK Sport. Just six blocks from the Nashville Arena, on the east
bank of the Cumberland River, a 67,400-seat, open-air football stadium
is being built for the NFL's Oilers who will play their first game in
Nashville in the summer of 1999. The stadium is visible from the Nashville
Arena, and the connection will be emphasised through the use of similar
materials, including steel and corrugated metal, and related shades
of architectural precast.
Barnert, who is also the principal for the stadium project, is justifiably
proud of the considerable footprint that HOK will ultimately leave on
Nashville through the design of the two facilities. "After spending
so much time here in the past four years, I love the city and feel like
part of the community. I can give people directions to Opryland!"
NHL on the Horizon
With an ownership group and a facility in place, Nashville's bid to
attract a professional hockey team is on track. "It appears that
will happen in the near future," says Jalilvand. "The NHL
is looking at potential cities now, and Nashville is the only one that
has a state-of-the-art arena built and ready to go." For now, the
offices that could accommodate both a NHL and NBA franchise remain unfinished,
as does the 1,400-square-metre space for the Tennessee Sports Hall of
Fame.
At the project's peak Barnert estimates as many as 24 HOK Sport architects,
interior designers, planners and landscape architects were working in
concert on the design of the Nashville Arena. Other key team members
included Thornton-Tomasetti's New York office for structural engineering,
Smith Seckman Reid, Inc of Nashville for MEP engineering and architect-of-record
Hart Freeland Roberts, Inc of Brentwood, Tennessee.
In his 13 years with HOK Sport Barnert has worked on everything from
major and minor league baseball parks to NFL stadia and multipurpose
arenas. He says the nature of baseball typically lends itself to the
most interesting, quirky designs. However, the design of Nashville Arena
was anything but rigid. "This arena is so fascinating because of
all the things it can do and the way that we were able to draw on the
city of Nashville to influence the design. It's neat to see how excited
the people are about the facility. We think it's one of a kind and sets
some new standards for arena design."
 Singer
Amy Grant gave the Nashville Arena's inaugural performance last December.
She said on local TV that "there are other premier entertainment
centres around the country but this one's not going to be beat by anything
else."
Ben Barnert is a senior vice president and principal
of HOK Sports Facilities Group and a member of the company's management
board.
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(All
photographs reproduced courtesy of Bob Greenspan, HOK Sport.)
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