The Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center ribbon-cutting took place on Thursday.
It sits on 123 acres of a 200-acre plot in Fayetteville, Georgia, features 19 outdoor playing surfaces, two indoor playing surfaces, and headquarters space for all U.S. Soccer staff. It will be home to all of U.S. Soccer’s 27 national teams.
It was designed by the global architecture firm Gensler, led by Andrew Jacobs, its Principal and Design Director. He began his career in sports at Rosser International in Atlanta, where he was a Vice President of Sports Architecture.
SOCCER AMERICA: How long has sports facility design been part of your architecture career and how did it come about?
ANDREW JACOBS: I’ve been doing it most of my career. After I graduated from Auburn University and moved up the road to Atlanta, I was working in hospitality and hotels, which is a great way to cut your teeth, because you start really learning about user experience and guest experience.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, where sports is just very much ingrained in the culture. The Steelers. The Pirates. When I was working at a firm as a young intern, we had an opportunity to study a baseball stadium as a potential project. As a young intern, I didn’t have much else to do, so I just dove into it and found out that I really loved solving the problem that is baseball geometry, athletic spaces and feeling that out.
It overlapped two of my passions, architecture and sports, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
SA: What was your first soccer work?
ANDREW JACOBS: In Qatar, we did some of the FIFA training sites, working with a local firm there, ECG. Then, with another firm, the Dubai National Stadium. Those were the two first major soccer projects. Before that, with my other firm, we did soccer facility studies all over the place.
SA: When you were young going to sports events, did you pay attention to the things you work on now? Sports facility design has obviously evolved quite a bit …
ANDREW JACOBS: Oh yeah. I think one of the things that we do extremely well at Gensler is focus on the human experience. At the end of the day, the building is for people, and really concentrating on how you make that personal experience extremely elevated. And that’s for every fan type, from the GA [general admission] fan to the VVIPs who use the facilities.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, my life experience was going to Pirates games, going to Steelers games, and thinking, “Man, I don’t want to pee in a trough.” [laughs] That used to be the norm for everything.
I have a saying, “You have to plan for the crowds, but design for the person.” It’s figuring out seating type and how quickly you can get to food service. The belly-up concession stands are moving away now. The grab-and-go, the speed-to-service becomes a big deal for less expensive seats.
In architecture and construction, we moved away from precast seats and bleachers and just trying to shove as many people into a thing — to making sure that there’s space allocated for a number of different experiences for people. The watching of the game will be done, but that’s not the only part of a stadium experience.
But what you really try to amplify for them, the crux of the question is, how do I capture somebody’s spirit when they first walk in the building?
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