Barclays Center

SHoP Architects

BARCLAYS CENTER • LOCATION -BROOKLYN, NY • COMPLETED 2012 • SIZE - 675,000 SF • ARENA – BROOKLYN NETS

“Balance between iconic form and performative engagement with the street. Connects intersecting streets with a 30’ high canopy/oculus creating an open plaza .” - Shop Architects

Arena space is direct replica of Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (Pacers arena) Allowed developers to avoid years of design work. Widely criticized as a characterless box placed in a metropolis. Hired Shop to re-design the Fieldhouse for Brooklyn, maintaining the original arena structure. Entire building, plaza, and new subway entrance designed and detailed in 7 weeks by 25 people.

Façade’s performance: intended to “soften” the presence of the massive stadium

Weathered steel parametrically controlled for smaller panels at bottom (pedestrian scale) and larger panels at top (urban scale)

FACADE – direct file to fabrication process using CATIA -Shop maintained direct control over fabrication and construction -12,000 steel panels laid flat and CNC milled – each panel weathered 3-1/2 months -Digital file used to estimate all building materials to be procured for job -Created custom IPhone app to track pieces from fabrication to construction sites

Everyone’s a Critic “I think of Renzo Piano's elegant stadium at Bari, a building that brings structural logic, cohesion of purpose

and form into an elegant whole, and wonder how SHoP came up with this striving, pretentious and convoluted mess. It's incredibly ugly lacking all sense of design, proportion, scale or finesse. From an urban perspective, it is little more than an overwrought and badly sculpted backdrop to the unneccessarily large 'Barclays' signage. What a lost opportunity.” - hharch1 - archrecord.construction.com

“It's horrible. The fact that all of the photos are night shots confirms how much there is to hide.

Unfortunately it looks exactly like something that was designed and detailed in 7 weeks. That might be appropriate for an edition of extreme home make-over, but not for a civic building in a major city. Ratner's motivation was money, pure and simple. I doubt it ever occurred to him that he might leave something memorable to posterity. A sad outcome on all fronts. Everyone loses.” - EDFRaynes1

“it’s a horrible monstrosity in the middle of quaint parts for Brooklyn” - maykirk