- I'm Stephen Chung, and I'm an architect and a teacher.

On each episode of Cool Spaces, I'll deconstruct the world of architecture.

I'll show you some great buildings, how they were designed, and just what makes them so cool.

What does it take to create the coolest place to see a marquee show or the big game?

We'll go to Dallas and the Cowboys' new football stadium, visit the Kauffman Center, a concert hall in downtown Kansas City, and explore Brooklyn's dynamic Barclays Center.

Performance Spaces on this episode of Cool Spaces.

- Whether it's a rock concert, an opera, or the big game, the sheer spectacle of a public event can bring thousands of people together under one roof.

For an architect, designing a performance space represents a unique opportunity to create the setting for this unfolding drama.

But in an age of high-definition, surround-sound home entertainment systems, getting people out of the house for a live event can be a challenge.

The Dallas Cowboys are known as America's team, and when the organization decided to build a new home, they faced a simple challenge: make it bigger and better than any other football stadium.

- I wanted this stadium to be something more than just a stadium.

I wanted parts of it-- to walk in and think you were walking in the lobby of The Ritz and so that this stadium, from the get-go, was about architecture.

- Jerry Jones had conflicting requirements: maintain a rich history and tradition and look forward with a new, state-of-the-art facility.

Old Texas Stadium had a signature opening in the roof.

That element would be retained, but the new stadium had to be a lot more than that.

- When I was a senior in college, I got to go in the Astrodome in Houston, the first air-conditioned stadium, and when I walked in, it was surreal.

It was like being on another planet, and I thought, "How inspirational, how neat it would be to compete in a stadium like this."

[upbeat jazzy music] ♪ ♪ - Smile.

♪ ♪ - It's amazing.

It's eighth wonder of the world.

Yeah, it's-- we were here when it opened, and it just blew me away.

- Like all modern stadiums, there's a must-have checklist: luxury boxes, wide-screen scoreboard, broadcast studio, and an underground tunnel that moves everything from players to concert stages.

Add to that checklist three levels of premium suites.

And inside these suites, there's always a reminder that football is center stage at this stadium.

You see this?

It's a football.

It's a football... Football.

- In my world, one and one is three.

I'm talking about, of course, the stadium, but it also has to also have perception and be bigger than life.

This stadium was built for television.

- After a national search, Dallas-based HKS Architects was chosen to design the stadium.

They had experience with a wide range of sports facilities, including the recently completed football stadium for the Indianapolis Colts.

- The form of the building... - Bryan Trubey, a principal at HKS, was the architect who led the team.

- Characteristic opening in the roof.

'Cause you can actually see a 1/4 mile through the center of the structure.

- To create a building of this complexity required computer technology like nothing else before it.

- It's proprietary technology that we've developed.

Nobody can handle a model this complex.

- So in the old days, we would build a model.

We'd bring the model to the owner's office and say, "This is what it looks like," and that's not good enough these days.

- We still use traditional methods like physical models, but this allows us to get our ideas across much more completely, much more carefully.

- What I like about this building is that they had to solve so many problems, and yet they do it in just a few key design moves.

The first is its bold, simple shape.

The second: expressive structure which reaches down and welcomes people in.

And finally, a composition of materials consisting of steel, metal, translucent glass, which work together to create a harmonious whole.

The setting for Cowboys Stadium was a flat, empty, suburban site.

The playing field was dropped into the middle of this blank slate, and the enclosure wrapped around that.

The placement of the arches thrust past the entrance to form the main entry plaza, a space that extends 1,000 feet to the main entry road.

It's this outdoor space that's makes up the grand public sequence, a long line of trees surrounding a shallow pool and artwork that punctuates that space.

Now, in the aerial view, you can even see how the retractable roof reinforces this movement.

This is the dominant axis, and all of the main elements are organized by this axis.

The rest of the site-- mostly parking-- is like a stone being dropped into a pond with ripples radiating out from it.

Here, it's the curved enclosure, which now radiates out in the form of parking.

So the site for Cowboys Stadium was forcefully shaped by the building design and not by its surroundings, like it is in most buildings.

What was your thought process when you sort of came up with this?

- Well, we wanted to create a modern, progressive look to the building, because the Cowboys are an international brand.

- Now, this building is massive, so how did you counteract it feeling too over-oppressive?

- Well, one of the big moves was the glass wall, and so we did two things with it.

We tilted it at 14-degree angle, which gives it kind of a lightness rather than having just a flat elevation, and we curved it, so it's an 800-foot glass curve.

- And then I wonder about that sliver of glass above it.

What is that for?

- That's really to separate the roof from the body of the stadium.

It allows us to have each component of the building visible and understandable, whereas a lot of buildings are built kind of like a lump.

You can't tell the difference between the roof and the sides.

- What makes this stadium really unique are two massive trusses that hold up the longest single span roof structure in the world.

Instead of hiding them inside the structure, they extend past the building envelope and onto the grand concourse.

So how did they choose to take this route?

Let's find out.

Paul, you're a structural engineer.

What are my choices?

- Sure.

For long span, think of something like the Golden Gate Bridge.

So we have a cable that's crossing over the distance, and at either end, there's a tower, represented by your arm and my arm right now.

And if it's carrying these loads, those loads that go up the cable, like you're doing, take the loads in tension.

- Now, for Dallas, this would mean this would be the space.

You'd have these two towers and then this roof hanging overhead.

And this profile, I think, would be bad.

The owner, I know, wanted something to look more like the old Dallas Cowboys stadium, so what are my choices?

- Sure, we could do the exact opposite, in fact.

So instead of a sagging cable, we could flip it round and have an arch that's in compression.

So this is a little model, much like you may have seen of, say, in stone or in brick, in small spans, and if we hold either end-- 'cause it's important that it doesn't move-- we can see that it can take its own load pretty well.

Right, and then if it's dealing with slightly variable loads-- let's say snow, wind, or things like that-- then that sort of thing happens, and that's not a good thing, Stephen.

So for really long spans like the Dallas Stadium, they're using steel, which is a much stronger material than stone, and it's more continuous for taking those long span loads and making a successful structure.

- Now, you could've stopped the structure right at the face of the glass.

Why did you keep it going?

- Well, an arch is a more efficient path for the forces to flow through.

If we'd have stopped it right at the glass and turned it down, we'd have had a right angle.

We'd have had to spend a lot of money making that structure really strong.

- So do you call this an anchor?

- It's a pivot, actually.

That's the real name for it.

It literally lets the structure pivot.

The top of the structure in the middle of the 1/4 mile length moves about 2 feet during the year up and down-- cold and hot part of the year-- and this pivot right here allows that structure to move just that much without breaking.

And then the forces are fixed.

They don't move anymore, and they go straight into the ground.

- And so this is a pin, in essence, and it rotates really around that pin.

- That's exactly right.

It works just like a hinge on a door.

It's just the movement is very small, but in a monumental structure, that's a huge amount of force.

- What also makes this stadium different are 7-story-tall doors on both end zones.

How long does it take for this to open up fully?

- About six minutes.

- Six minutes?

- It really changes the building from what's essentially a 80,000-seat indoor arena to an 80,000-seat outdoor stadium.

[upbeat acoustic guitar music] ♪ ♪ - Most stadiums put the playing field on the same level as the entry.

Here, the field is depressed into the ground.

People enter at mid-level with the most appealing view of the stadium.

- So you get this monumental transparency that follows the arches all the way through the facility about 1/4 mile so that you can see from abutment to abutment.

So the space seems infinite, in a way, even though you're part of an enclosed environment.

- Every stadium has a video board but none of them as big as the one at Cowboys Stadium.

This screen spans from one 20-yard line to the other.

- We knew we were competing with people that could sit at home, watch on a 80- or 90-inch flat screen monitor with surround sound.

- None of us knew what it was going to be until we jacked it up there.

I don't mind telling you, when I saw it, I saw it's--how relative it was to the space that was involved, and then we started putting images on it.

I knew that we had a unique fan experience.

- The side of building is glass, but it's not just any ordinary glass.

This glass has a frit pattern on it.

By "frit," I mean "tiny little dots."

So at the bottom, there's a lot of little dots, which lets in less light, but as it goes up, there's less and less frit.

So from bottom to top, you get this gradual progression from translucent to completely transparent at the top.

It works kind of like a sunscreen.

You get the natural light, but the light is diffused.

Football is only one part of the experience at Cowboys Stadium.

Surprisingly, a world-class art program is another.

- As my mother said, no great building is complete without great art.

- Charlotte Jones Anderson, daughter of owner Jerry Jones, is Executive Vice President and Chief Brand Officer.

She oversees the strategy and presentation of the Cowboys brand.

Charlotte and her mother, Gene, formed an arts council to choose the artwork.

- You know, there were some people that said, "Oh, they would never do this," but every artist that we approached could not wait to get their hands on the size of these canvases, if you will.

- Having 80,000 people see their work at each game proved a strong draw to the artists.

- We have the art community coming out and enjoying a game that would've never... - Right.

- Come before.

And we have people at the stadium that are coming with their children that would've never taken them to an art museum.

So this is Franz Ackerman, Meet Me at the Waterfall and Coming Home.

This is our largest commission in terms of square footage.

What's so great is that the commission was supposed to stop here, but he couldn't find a stopping point.

- Football is all about thousands of voices cheering in unison, but Cowboys Stadium wasn't built just for football.

There are all sorts of events year-round, including concerts.

Getting the sound quality right for football and concerts presents a challenge that only a top acoustician can solve.

Jack Wrightson is a founding principal at a Dallas-based acoustical consulting and design firm.

So when you design a football stadium, it seems to me, the idea would be to maximize the sound.

- You're right.

If you're looking at-- the best possible thing for the team is, you want to have a great home field advantage.

You want the crowd to be as loud as possible.

Well, how do you do that?

So if we look at some of the seating over here, you can see that it overhangs the levels below.

That actually traps sound underneath and helps project it down to the seats that are out in the open.

- The glass and roof-deck trap sounds in the upper levels so that even fans in the highest seats feel like they're part of the game.

And what about concerts?

Directional line array loudspeakers allow them to target each section to get the best quality sound.

- Well, when we model the space, we can model it occupied or unoccupied.

We know, what the-- believe it or not, we know what the sound absorptive qualities are of a typical person wearing typical clothing, and you can actually adjust this seasonally, 'cause they tend to wear more clothing in colder weather than warmer weather.

- So people absorb sound?

- Correct.

[crowd cheering] - Well, it's game day, and soon, 100,000 screaming fans are gonna fill out every square inch of this place.

- So this is all about events.

This 1,000-foot-long procession into the building is really designed to be a place that can accommodate up to 40,000 people moving all the way into the facility itself, but as important, it's designed to be an entertainment space.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - Go, Cowboy.

♪ ♪ - This is such a great space, because the players will come from the locker room.

You know, they've got their game face on and all that intensity, and they run right in the middle of the fans right here to behind the bench, and as you can see, all the fans are right in the middle of it.

- And they can meet-- they can touch the players.

- You can reach out and high-five 'em and take their picture, get an autograph, see the coaches.

You know, it doesn't get much better than this right here.

[upbeat rock music] [crowd roaring] ♪ ♪ - [cheering] ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] [all shouting] [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ - How do you feel as an architect having designed this place?

- Well, it's great.

I think the thing that we're probably the most excited about is all the different things we were able to do in this building that have been warming up in our practice for a long time, and we really got to do a lot of things on this building that have just never been done before.

- And I'm proud that this stadium has had the visibility it's had.

That was one reason that I spent the money to build it.

I was hoping it would have positive critique and positive reviews, and I'm thankful for that, that it has.

- Whether it's football or opera, performance spaces fundamentally do the same thing.

People come together in one space, under one roof, to witness a spectacle.

At the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, you get two roofs.

After years without even one proper building for their performing arts, it was decided to build two halls for theater, concerts, and ballet and place them under one all-encompassing structure.

- A performing arts building, a cultural building, is very, very central in the life of its city.

You know, many cities build them, but for the particular city you're building it in, that's the big event.

So the challenge has many kind of grades: sounds terrific; the sight lines are terrific; the performers can operate effectively in it; it lends itself to the art.

But that's not enough.

You need the magic.

What is the magic?

The magic is when people are so excited to go there that they say, "Oh, I'm not going to watch this "on my screen at home.

This--I want to go there.

I want to be there."

- [chuckling] - Good?

- Good.

- Good.

- Good, good, and more good.

[Mozart's Magic Flute playing] [rousing opera music] ♪ ♪ - ♪ So count your sheep ♪ ♪ Mama's singing you to sleep ♪ ♪ With a moonshine lullaby ♪ [gentle orchestral music] [energetic ukulele music] ♪ ♪ - Jane Chu, the President and CEO of the Kauffman Center since 2006, played an active role in the building process.

- A building like this has the opportunity to stimulate a lot of activity in the community, and we have been a player in doing that.

I call it the front porch effect, because let's say that somebody sweeps their front porch, and the rest of the neighborhood looks over and says, "He's sweeping his front porch.

I should sweep mine too."

And that's been a lot of the way this building has served as a catalyst.

- And this is your favorite place?

- It is, because when I look out at this Brandmeyer Great Hall and the lobby, and it's filled with people, and they're coming to different performances, I get this sense that we are starting to fulfill our mission.

- So we ought to go... - Isaac Franco, a principal with Safdie Architects since 1980, was the project manager for the Kauffman Center.

- You can see the city.

You can see the people on different levels.

So it's--it's always dynamic and changing.

- It's a grand entrance, for sure.

- We think of this building or this lobby as the--kind of the front porch of this buildings.

- Safdie Architects has built significant buildings all over the world.

They're known for their bold form-making, often with dramatic curves and geometrical patterns.

They believe in enriching a community with vital social spaces.

The creative process for these buildings begins with Moshe Safdie's pens and colored pastels.

Even as he travels across the world, these sketches allow him to flesh out a design.

- What we were seeing is, there was this sort of hill of downtown with all the towers that make up the downtown building and the Convention Center with its little mask right there and the district of the-- the warehouse district that's in front of it, and we're looking at that, and that's the site.

- How does the building work?

- Well, it's actually three buildings.

The two halls are independent structures.

They have their own walls, their own roof, their own structure.

Surrounding them is the tensile structure of the mass of the building, which contains the bars, but for acoustical reasons, we had to isolate the two halls completely from the rest of the building.

So it's actually three buildings.

You can think of it as, you know, a stacking doll, a Russian doll where one is inside the other.

That's what it is here.

- The Kauffman Center is situated on the edge of downtown.

There's the building.

Now, the first notion was that the lobby of the building should be oriented towards downtown, which is here, but after seeing the sweeping views to the south, it became clear how best to organize the building.

The building site is also on a hill.

That made it possible to place underground parking into the slope of the hill, and you can see the extent of the parking.

With parking below, the main floor level is elevated, and from that lobby, you get a panoramic view over the city which faces south, which means you get natural daylight all day long.

Here's this--east.

There's the south.

That's the west.

And the sun is doing something like that, which is bringing natural daylight into that space all day long.

- I wanted each hall to very much have its own presence.

So if this is one hall, and, you know, this is the other hall, the concert hall, and this is the proscenium theater and the opera house, then being side by side, each of them has its own identity.

You can see that in this model.

As they sit side by side, this frieze is one instrument.

This frieze is another instrument.

They're united or integrated together by this great glass stent.

- Steel cables, which support a canted glass wall, create an enclosure to form a dramatic drop-off area.

At night, a light at the base of each cable shoots a beam of light along its length.

- The roof is bead-blasted stainless steel.

- And what are the little dimples?

I see a little... - The dimples are snow guards so that the snow doesn't slide off the roof in big chunks.

- Pretty neat.

- Yeah, it's an unexpected bonus to the roof, because we didn't expect to have that glistening and that sparkle to the roof, but when we put the snow guard in with the sun coming in from the south, it does give you this-- this-- the sparkle, which is interesting.

- You know what's very nice?

I like this wispiness there.

That's real fun.

- And the play of the light and shadow on the side walls and on the roof is very interesting and exciting.

- In most cases, the back of house of a concert hall or theater is blank, high walls with little visual interest, but Safdie came up with a solution so that both sides of the building are equally interesting.

When this project was commissioned, the idea was that the building would be oriented towards the north.

That's where the city is.

But instead, the architect, in a way, turned its back on the building, and the idea is that the lobby is facing the south.

You get this wonderful porch which overlooks the rest of the city.

And what does the city get?

It gets this wonderful sculpture.

Now, the sculpture, of course, is the two different concert halls, and in between, you've got this slot of space.

That slot of space leads people down the street from the city, through this entrance, and into the wonderful lobby.

This is almost like a sculpture to me.

- Well, it is.

It's actually the most photographed side of the building.

This side is more solid because it contains the back of house, contains the stage tower of the proscenium theater.

Each of those bends are exactly the same radius, and we play with the idea of a precast vertical wall and a stainless steel curved roof.

And it just tilted in different plane.

They basically rotate from a point down in the earth.

- It's much nicer you did that, 'cause I imagine if this was also the same material as the stainless steel, it would be totally different.

- It would be completely different, yeah.

- So when you start a design, you don't have a preconceived idea.

You don't have a-- kind of a bold form that you're bringing with you.

- You know, I think every architect has a kind of baggage, and the baggage has to do with themes.

You can't but be engaged with a formal vocabulary, but I don't come to the project with a kind of preconceptual formal idea.

I resist that.

I don't trust it.

- So it's the site.

It's the history.

It's the culture, all those things-- you look at all those things.

- Right, and the program--what is the building for, you know?

- Moshe Safdie's designs span five decades.

Habitat 67 in Montreal was designed when Safdie was only in his late 20s.

It skyrocketed him to international acclaim overnight, but its inspiration started with a child's toy.

- You're familiar with what these are.

They're LEGOs.

- And I'm familiar that this is your first project, and somehow, I was told that you were using LEGOs to design this project.

- Yeah, we discovered at the time that LEGO fit really beautifully.

You could snap them together.

Its two to one in proportion, not unlike those, and so if you get enough of them, you can make the whole building.

There's one module, second module, third module.

And so we go, and we cleaned out all the LEGOs in Montreal at the time.

This is in the city of Chongqing in the center of China.

- More than most architects, Moshe Safdie likes to design with physical models.

- At a very early phase... - His staff makes models at each stage of the design process, using pliable, easily manipulated materials, like foam core.

They continue to revise and reshape the design at different scales.

Tools like 3-D printers and laser cutters make increasingly complex geometries and elaborate details.

Complex models also play a role in the sound design.

A large-scale model was built to perfect the acoustics in the Kauffman Center.

Working with Yasu Toyota, one of the top acousticians in the world, they came up with a solution that involved a hall inside a hall.

- The way to achieve that is to really duplicate the structure.

When you have a column or beam that go from inside to outside, even if you have a lot of sound insulation, the vibration will come through.

Here, we have taken that geometry and translated it into a duplicate dual structure.

The blue is inside.

It's containing the room.

It's the structure that encloses the auditorium.

The red is the exterior envelope, and it's supporting the exterior envelope of stainless steel and precast concrete and walls and windows, and the two don't touch.

And that gives you the perfect sound separation.

- This level of detail applies to everything, from the light fixtures to the walls.

What happens in this space?

- Well, this is a-- basically a ballet/opera house where performances happen on the stage.

[orchestra tuning] - Along the guard rails, custom light fixtures are made of resin.

- And behind it, we have a Mylar, which is kind of-- like an aluminum foil, basically, a reflective material that was crinkled by hand.

It was all done by one young woman for a number of months, one by one, crinkling all the Mylar individually.

- But no one is the same?

- No, none of them is the same.

It's all handmade.

- Each of these represents one of the galleries.

- Murals painted by students at the Kansas City Art Institute decorate and cover acoustic wall treatments.

They add color to the theater until the lights go down and the curtain goes up.

[applause] [dramatic opera music] ♪ ♪ - When you enter the concert hall-- and once you enter it, this is all wood.

We see a model here that's an abstract model, all made with white cardboard, but as you enter the hall, it is all made with fir, and you kind of almost feel like you're entering a stringed instrument.

- Mm-hmm.

Now, the acoustics in here are very different.

I can just tell that the sound quality is very different.

- Yeah, well, the sound here was very carefully researched and then designed.

The ceiling is extremely heavy, and everything is reflective.

It's not for amplified sound.

This is an acoustical hall, strictly for music.

- Is the wood helpful in that?

- Yes, the floor here, which is very soft, is Alaskan white cedar, and that was specifically chosen for this.

Every single piece was precut, brought to the site, and laid by hand on a very heavy back wall.

It was an amazing job.

A lot of pieces came in individually, but somehow, they were put in place, and they fit perfectly.

- ♪ Two drifters ♪ ♪ Off to see the world ♪ ♪ There's such a lot of world ♪ ♪ To see ♪ ♪ We're after... ♪ - As much as everyone loves the way these halls look, the design doesn't automatically make great sound.

Perfect acoustics are not as easy as it looks, according to one of our resident experts.

Matthew, you're an acoustician, which means your job is to make sure spaces like this sound great.

Now, wood must be real helpful for that, right?

- Well, wood's great for making an instrument out of because it can flex and resonate with sound.

In a concert hall, we don't want the walls to flex and resonate.

We want them to reflect sound.

So what they've done here is built a concrete wall and then laminated the wood to it to make it very stiff so that it reflects sound instead of flexing.

- What other things can we do to improve sound?

- A very important thing is to make the hall very quiet, and part of doing that is isolation.

So we build the hall as a whole separate structure isolated within the main building by taking the hall and putting it on big springs like this that can allow the entire concert hall to float inside of the main building.

In this case, instead of using a steel spring, they've used a neoprene pad, like this, but much larger, to float the hall off the structure.

- And what about the form?

How does the form affect the sound quality?

- Well, the form's very important, because that decides how sound will move within the space.

The traditional concert hall space is a shoe box, where the musicians are at one end and the long, narrow space has walls that reflect sound back into the audience.

In this hall, this doesn't look like a traditional concert hall, but they've picked up a lot of the design elements of a traditional shoe box.

We have these long, parallel sides to reflect sound back into the audience.

We have this wall behind the orchestra to reflect sound forward.

And where the ceiling has this dramatic slope and would naturally reflect sound away from the audience, they've augmented with a second ceiling that brings sound forward into the audience but also back down at the musicians so they can hear themselves when they're playing.

- This is a technical area of the concert hall.

It's the ceiling above the concert hall.

It has all the equipment to run a show.

- You don't normally get to see this part of the building.

This is really all the guts, I guess.

- That's what makes the theater work.

- The plaster of the glass is so thick.

Why is it so thick?

- Well, the acoustical consultant wanted a very heavy ceiling to reflect sound, so we basically did a ceiling, a plaster ceiling, with four layers of plaster.

So it took a long time, and it's all held by that steel structure that you see here.

- All of this wouldn't be possible without Julia Irene Kauffman, the Chair and the CEO of the Kauffman Foundation.

Originally the plan of her mother Muriel, it took more than 15 years for Julia to make the Center a reality.

Why don't you talk about your mother and her vision for Kansas City and also this building?

- She said, "Go, and look for land.

Let's build a performing arts center," and she died five months later.

So I was left to pick up the pieces and carry on.

And really, that's all she said, was, "Go, and find a piece of land," so that's what I did.

I bought the land and would stand out here late at night, and we'd come and stand on it and just look south.

So we knew that we had to have something that was facing south.

I never expected it would attract this much attention.

So it's been very exciting, that aspect of it.

- The great hall foyer serves the theater and the concert hall.

A series of balconies undulate rhythmically.

- They start vertical at the corner here, and as they go around, they start tilting out.

- Now, what is the result of all this movement, all of the different radiuses?

- Well, what we wanted to do was to create a space that had fluid movement of ribbons basically cutting from east to west.

It's the fluidity of the space that we were looking for.

- And above us, we also have this curving wall, and that's a different shape, a different radius.

What's it like when there's a performance?

What's the space feel like?

- Well, it's vibrant.

It has a lot of people moving up and down, and it becomes quite animated.

- That's what's so great about the arts.

It can bring people together.

There's different forms of avenues of expression, and I think this building has played a role in that.

[peaceful instrumental music] ♪ ♪ [lively ukulele music] ♪ ♪ [gentle ukulele music] ♪ ♪ [energetic ukulele music] ♪ ♪ - You know, I can be excited and think it has a magic.

That doesn't mean anything.

The proof is in the response of people, and now that I've been there several times-- I've come back for specific concerts and with specific musicians, and I've heard the organ, and I've listened to opera, and I've seen the public in the building-- they are really charged when in it, and there's no greater satisfaction for an architect than just seeing the public charged.

[sprightly opera music] - So it's about the people.

This is almost like a community center, bringing people together for all kinds of avenues of expression.

[stirring orchestral music] - What would your mother think about this building now?

- Well, I think she'd love it.

I really do.

I think she'd enjoy it.

And I think she'd be very active, and she'd be thrilled with it.

- ♪ Danced ♪ ♪ All night ♪ [applause] [dramatic orchestral flourish] [cheers and applause] - When the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and the Kauffman Center were built, there was any empty plot of land to build on.

Dropping Barclays Center into the middle of Brooklyn, New York, was an entirely different story.

With such a large building, people were anxious about the new arena.

How would it fit into the neighborhood?

Surely it would bring a lot more traffic and congestion.

And would the community embrace their new team, the Brooklyn Nets?

It seems to have done that and a lot more.

So how did Barclays Center become the hottest ticket in town?

This is such a big building and such a busy place.

Now, traffic must have been a big issue.

- No, it--you know, it was a huge concern, but what's been amazing is, really, this design privileges mass transit.

We're located at the central hub where you have nine subway lines, Long Island Rail Road all converging at this point.

So basically, the majority of people come here using mass transit, and this is what they come into, this incredible civic gesture and the idea of the arms reaching out, the front porch.

You couldn't ask for a better moment.

- The inside entrance and main concourse embody the energy of the public plaza.

From here, visitors can see directly into and through the arena.

- This was not supposed to be an arena with concrete floors, even if it had been beautifully designed.

The idea was to make it completely different, more like a theater than an arena or stadium.

We're in an urban area.

It's a little bit different.

Why not feel like you're part of where you are?

Instead, there's a tendency to build public stadiums, arenas in a way that they're unto themselves.

That's just wrong.

You want to have the sense of urban, cars going by.

- There's something almost athletic about the building exterior.

With its fluid, muscular forms, it's an apt expression of the players inside.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ It's a pretty dense city, so where in Brooklyn was this built?

- Well, it's really interesting.

It's right in the middle of five established neighborhoods, but it was over a train yard, and it was right where two major boulevards cross, at Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn.

- Putting a new arena in Brooklyn was an exciting opportunity, but the small size of the lot and its awkward, triangular configuration presented a real challenge.

Two firms worked together on the site.

SHoP was the design architect.

AECOM, with its wealth of experience in sports architecture, was the architect of record.

Initially, AECOM test fit the site and set up some of the organizing principles: court here, seating and a concourse that rings the court, a small service area to the back, and the main entry right here.

SHoP architects entered the picture and worked very hard to find other opportunities.

The triangle was transformed into a grand entry plaza.

A spectacular canopy overhead-- what they call the Oculus-- and the sides of the building were so tight against the streets, it made you wonder how this might work.

What SHoP did was make the sides transparent-- for example, the retail shop here-- so that people passing by can look directly into the arena and feel connected to the activities on the inside.

It's not like this was the first time Brooklyn had its own professional sports team.

The last time the Brooklyn Dodgers played here was 1957.

In fact, the flagpole out in front is the original one from Ebbets Field.

It marks the spot where the Dodgers wanted to build a new stadium before making their move.

- So even when we're in the field, we can actually... - When SHoP was invited to design the new arena, they employed the most cutting-edge design tools and software.

Their use of technology starts with some old-school inspiration.

- We grew up building models, and we're just passionate about aviation.

And what's interesting is, a lot of the technology we use here comes from the aerospace industry.

So there's definitely a direct connection there.

The other thing about this is that they're all-- there's, like, hundreds of planes up here.

They're all different shapes and sizes with different performance envelopes, but they all can fly.

And in a way, we look at buildings the same way.

- Using advanced, computer-aided software, SHoP's work pushes the boundaries of form, space, and building technology.

- So we said, "Why couldn't we use "some of that same knowledge and bring it into the world of architecture?"

In a way, we see architecture the same way.

No one building, no one client is the same-- and understanding how you design to a very specific problem.

- And it was a super complex shape, so we made literally hundreds of models that showed how we did the different forms and dimensions and shapes.

You know, should it be stone?

Should it be stainless steel?

You know, should it be painted metal, a color?

And we really thought about the sort of, you know, postindustrial Brooklyn heritage.

Like, what makes Brooklyn authentic?

What makes it cool?

It's got this kind of grit to it.

- It's a triangle.

We don't normally work with footprints that are triangles.

Anytime you're working in Brooklyn, in New York City, the urban setting, just the whole construction site is a big challenge.

- AECOM, a firm with a lot of experience designing arenas, served as sports architect and architect of record for this venue, using their knowledge to collaborate with SHoP.

- You have 12,000 panels, 940 mega-panels.

- Technology is the only way to help manage this level of complexity.

- And so what we do is, we do a point cloud scan of the actual steel and layer that onto the digital model to see if those clips are in the right place.

If any of the clips are off, we just recut them off and reposition them so that they're exactly the right place, and then the panels go up seamlessly.

- When most buildings are new, they look great, but it all goes downhill from there.

The building gets dirty.

It deteriorates.

But not here.

The steel skin will only look better with time.

- So we created a model in the computer where we're able to look at the entire building and actually change the percentages of the open and closed pieces of steel and actually watch the budget numbers change, maintain the overall look of the building but yet hit the number that we needed to actually get it built.

- Well, fantastic.

Client must have loved that.

- They did, and we got all the architecture we wanted.

'Cause we wanted something raw and industrial, something that would patina and age gracefully.

We didn't want it shiny and painted.

And what we did was, we cut the 12,000 different-shaped pieces of steel and hung them on a dry cleaner rack where they went through 15 wet/dry cycles a day, using water we collected from the roof, for four months.

And at the end of that four months, they had basically ten years of rust patina on them.

It won't age for the next 40 or 50 years and gives you this kind of beautiful, rough, leathery, almost snakeskin look that we think is really kind of fantastic.

- No two of the 12,000 panels are the same, and every single one floats out and then folds and makes these sort of shadow boxes so that when the light hits it, you get all these different patterns.

- One of the most impressive structures is the Oculus, a huge, freestanding canopy.

How do you build something like this so it hangs in midair?

That's where the structural engineer comes in.

Paul, this entry plaza's a gigantic space.

How did they create the structure for it?

- So we could span that distance over the plaza with a beam, which is something like this where we could support at either ends, and our arms would be acting like columns.

- But let's say, in this scenario, you're the building or the arena, and then this is the entry plaza, and people are coming from this direction.

I don't want this column in the way.

How do we get rid of it?

- Sure, so in terms of the change we could make at the building end, I could move my arms around and the way we support the structure, and if I do something like this, you can now remove your arm away.

Right, now we have the structure hanging out into the space because of the way we've supported it back at the building, and this is called a cantilever.

- Now, in this building, what happens is, this cantilever sweeps around and ties back over here like this, so that's a double cantilever?

- It is, cantilevered either end, but it does something else as well.

Both cantilevers now act in torsion.

- And what do you mean by "torsion"?

- "Torsion" is "twist," and something that's good at carrying twist or torsion is a tubular shape which is continuous, so much like this where you have a tube shape around the perimeter.

And you can't see this that's in-- it's buried inside the facade of the structure itself.

But if I hold this end, and you try twisting it-- see, it's very hard to twist.

But if I take the same shape and I put a slot in it here, then if I hold it the same way-- you try twisting again.

- And this is analogous to a beam in twisting.

This is very bad.

- This is a bad thing, exactly.

So in the case of the Barclays Center, what they've got is the two cantilevers reaching out either end, like my arms, to support this area outside the plaza.

They're acting as cantilevers for my shoulder, and they're also taking torsion to represent that space.

- What also makes Barclays Center different is the transparency.

There's street-level retail space, which is unusual for an arena.

This public interface invites the community to look inside and share a sense of ownership in the Center.

- So this is the practice court, and we're one level below grade here, and what's unusual about it is the transparency from all of the public spaces, so there's this constant inside/outside connection.

So if you look up here, you can see right out to the public street.

People walking on the streets of Brooklyn can look into the practice court.

You have the VIP entry on this side.

Right above here, it actually opens up into one of the restaurants in the bowl itself.

Here, it connects to the Courtside Club so that people could have events.

Not only could they practice-- the teams practice here-- but you could have corporate events or parties in this location.

On this side, it looks up into the main entry of the building.

And if you look here, it goes right through a public restaurant, and you can see out to the Oculus and the main public space in front of the building.

We thought of sports as theater with an unscripted ending, and so that was our inspiration, was to make this feel like black box theater... - Oh, look at that.

- [laughs] To have this super dark bowl with the black seats and the dark gray concrete and the blackened steel and then make the court pop so that the performers, whether they're the athletes or at a concert or an event, really almost float magically in the middle of the space.

- And what's really unique is that you can really see now the street--that's where the street is, right?

So people can actually see inside the arena.

- Exactly.

As part of this whole inside/outside urban arena idea, we wanted the architecture to be really inviting, so when you're in the public space, you can actually see right into the bowl.

You could see the scoreboard before you've even given your ticket in.

- From that plaza under the Oculus, you can really begin to see inside... - Exactly.

- The concourse that rings the arena is filled only with Brooklyn-based vendors that were handpicked.

- So as you come into the main concourse, you can pretty much see directly out right onto the Brooklyn street.

- And the court is right there.

- The court is right there.

- Director of Interiors at SHoP, Krista Ninivaggi made sure that arena amenities were just as progressive as the exteriors.

- So it doesn't feel just like a sports arena with all of these beer companies and all these sponsors kind of all over the place.

It doesn't feel like that at all.

- We were striving very hard to kind of mute down a lot of that.

That's kind of where a lot of the idea for the black box theater came from, 'cause there's reclaimed woods.

There's skateboard ramp materials for a lot of the tabletops.

A lot of the furniture is made out of bar-stock steel.

There's rock concrete.

And we were just able to kind of combine them in a way that was very clean, and so it felt luxurious and not messy.

- The club called The Vault may be the most exclusive destination, with 13 individual suites that radiate out from a glittering champagne bar.

The singer Jay Z is part of this space, right?

- Yes, Jay Z definitely had a lot of input into this space in particular.

It was kind of, every time we showed him a rendering, it was sort of, "Make it more gold.

Make it more gold," so we had a lot of fun with that.

- With Barclays Center on such a small and congested site, there was no space for parking or a loading dock.

The solution was to put in large elevators and a turnstile, like a lazy Susan, that spins trucks and busses around and sends them in the right direction underground.

Like the premium clubs and dining areas upstairs, the Brooklyn Nets got their own premium spaces too.

Barclays Center is the crown jewel of a much larger development called Atlantic Yards.

It's a massive 22-acre mixed-use commercial and residential development consisting of 14 towers.

The first tower to be built was designed by SHoP.

- How tall will that be?

- That will be 32 stories tall.

And what's fascinating about B2 is, it will be the tallest modularly constructed building in the world.

- And what do you mean by "modular"?

- What that means is that the actual apartments are built in a factory, like you the way you would build a car, and then shipped and stacked 32 stories tall.

- What's the advantage of doing that?

- Multiple.

One, the quality level is much higher.

Just like not building something in the field-- you're building it in a controlled factory environment.

That's better.

It also has less impact on the neighbors as you build it because you cut the construction time almost in half.

Everything is completed, from the bathrooms, the kitchens, the lighting, the flooring, the switch plates.

- Sounds fantastic, but now the problem is, you're going to block your beautiful building.

How do you feel about that?

- Well, you know, you always have mixed feelings, but at least we're blocking our own building.

- And how far does this go down?

All the way to where that crane is?

- To where that crane is, exactly.

- And 12 big developments, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The Atlantic Yards development extends well beyond the footprint of Barclays Center.

- This is the location where 12 more residential towers are going to go in the future, and these will be-- - There?

- Right in here.

And these will be mixed income, market rate, lots of public open space, really about 6 million square feet of housing.

- And your building this really right at that intersection of all of these different transportation lines.

- Exactly, so the arena is the heart of the development, but then really, the majority of it is about housing and retail that goes around it.

- Because the building site in Brooklyn was so much smaller than the typical arena, it had to be creatively squeezed in.

This is most apparent in the raked seating on the upper levels.

The slope was made as steep as possible to save every bit of space, specifically 14 feet on the sides.

- From a fan experience perspective, the seats are closer-- creates, you know, more volume from a sound perspective, gets louder in here.

That helps the home team.

- Because the volume is tighter.

- Yeah, you know, it's more vertical, so it's going down instead of up, like, you know, in some baseball stadiums.

- ♪ Play around ♪ [upbeat electronic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ Let the bass go ♪ [driving bass music] ♪ ♪ ♪ Let's do it ♪ [energetic electronic music] ♪ ♪ - The fan experience is the number one priority, because right now, the biggest challenge we have in the entertainment industry is getting people out of their homes where they have huge theater rooms.

We need to create a fan experience that is so awesome that they want to leave their house to come and to get that experience.

- So when you first conceived of this place, did you ever think it would be-- become such a destination?

- Well, the answer is, we did an enormous amount of work ahead of time to try and make it that.

I always say, "It's like a Broadway show.

You don't know till you open the door."

So we opened the door, and guess what.

We were so happy, and I have to say, even I, even we did not think it would become so significant.

Am I happy with it?

Oh, I sometimes go like this.

I pinch myself and say, "Wait a minute.

Did this really happen to me that I was part of?"

It's about people, and if people are happy and they enjoy this place, I'm happy.

- So what do these three performance spaces have in common?

They all started with a vision to create a place of pride for the community.

They had to be vital, interactive, social spaces that excite the audience, because getting people out to see a performance these days is more challenging than ever.