Fighting Irish Football: Let’s Redesign Notre Dame Stadium

If you’ve been reading my work here at One Foot Down for a bit you’ll know, besides keeping you informed on Notre Dame Fighting Irish baseball and hockey, I’m also an architect. It’s what I studied at Notre Dame and what I do for a living, and now I’m bringing it here to you as well.

For the next few weeks, leading up to the opening week of the football season, I am going to be publishing a series of stories looking at the design of Notre Dame Stadium and how to make it better. Each week will focus on a different aspect of stadium design in general as well a shaving a focus on Notre Dame Stadium. I’ll be looking at what Notre Dame does well and what it does not. I’ll be looking at precedents of successful stadiums that we can borrow ideas from, and wherever possible I’ll be including photos and drawings that I produce. At the end of the process we’ll have a new design for Notre Dame Stadium, whether or not it’s a better design is to be determined.

There are some rules though, since this process is only a few weeks long:

1. The original Stadium will be our starting point and we will be expanding that. For this exercise the original expansions and Campus Crossroads are completely wiped away.
2. The rest of campus will remain as it is today. Designing a stadium in less than two months is hard enough, I’m not touching anything else.
3. There is no right answer here and I want you to tell me where and when you think I’m wrong.
4. This exercise is meant to be engaging and spark discussion so PLEASE comment along the way. I know everybody here has an opinion on Notre Dame Stadium, share it.
5. While I want everybody to express their opinions please keep it civil. If people aren’t reading or commenting because the comments aren’t a fun place to be we’ve failed.

And that’s it! Before we get this process started though I want to hear from you. I’ve prepared a Google Form with some questions that will help guide me through this process. Please fill it out, it shouldn’t take too long. You can find that here or use the embedded form at the bottom of this article. The comments are here for a reason too, please add in anything you like there. Ideas, must haves, opinions, they’re all welcome and will all be helpful. Starting next week and every Thursday after leading up to the season we’ll have a new aspect of the stadium to look at so I hope to see you here every week!