Paul Brown Stadium now dominates the skyline. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

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        “The drama. The soaring. The interaction of parts! It has a wonderful sense of scale,” said architect David Niland.

        “I think it is overstated,” countered architectural historian Walter Langsam. “The skyline dwindles behind it.”

        After 28 months of construction on 1.85 million square feet of land, local architects are weighing in on the $453.2 million, 65,600-seat Paul Brown Stadium. Opinions differ on the details, but the consensus on the Queen City's newest landmark and new home of the Cincinnati Bengals, is generally favorable.

        Architects applaud the open-ended design that offers views of the city, the Kentucky hills and the Ohio River from inside. They praise the views through the stadium from both sides of the river and the sweeping “gull wings” of the roof. They give kudos to the way the outer walls are divided into layers of varying surfaces and textures.

        “It's both daring and dramatic,” said Alma Blackburn, president of Blackburn Architects, the Indianapolis firm designing the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on the riverfront.

Looking southeast inside the stadium. | ZOOM |

        The primary concern is its size — how it dominates the city skyline and will dwarf the proposed Banks housing project to the east.

        “It struggles to become part of the city,” said landscape architect Eric Doepke of Hyde Park.

        “These stadiums are so big, if you do it right it makes a difference. If you do it wrong you've really caused a problem,” said Ronald Turner, one of three principal architects at NBBJ Sports & Entertainment, the firm that designed the stadium.

        Did they do it right?

        “They get a high mark,” said Mr. Niland, a member of the Urban Design Review Board, the city's watchdog for major architectural projects, and professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati.

        “It has some details that are absolutely wonderful. It's a good sequence building. There is a lot of coherence and consistency to it.”

        “It's definitely one of the more progressive stadiums,” said Steven Kenat, an architect at Gartner Burdick Bauer-Nilsen, downtown. “Recent football stadiums have been so hard to design because they're so large, but (NBBJ) has done a good job of breaking that scale down, given that it is such a monolith.”

Opening the ends
        The western anchor of the central riverfront, Paul Brown Stadium stands as the symbolic gateway to the city for visitors coming from the south and west.

Team offices jut out from behind the south scoreboard. | ZOOM |

        “As we looked at the new Fort Washington Way and how it was going to be entering the city from the west, we thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if you would come around the curve and feel that you were going to travel right into the stadium?” Mr. Turner said.

        Designers had to bend a National Football League rule to get the views from the open-ended design because the NFL requires fields to have a north-south alignment.

        “Rather than align with Fort Washington Way, we really wanted to crank it (the field) to the northwest a little bit. The league allowed us to go 15 degrees, and that really opens the whole view of the building,” Mr. Turner said. As you drive by on Fort Washington Way, “you look right into it.”

        Other architects would prefer that the stadium were part of the city and not the other way around.

        “Because of their scale, the structures of both stadiums (this one and the new Reds stadium) place a vice-like grip on the central riverfront,” said Cincinnati architect William J. Brown. “That will cause the Banks development and related public-oriented aspects to be miniature in scale to those two structures.”

The canopy and outside walls offer sharp, unusual angles. | ZOOM |

        Mr. Doepke has worked on projects at Sawyer Point and Yeatman's Cove and the urban design plan for the central riverfront. He is concerned about the stadium's position in relation to the city and the planned green space.

        “I'm not sure that the stadium will not dominate that green space to such an extent that you never feel that you are free of the object.”

        “Does it have the appropriate relation to other human-scale activities that wish to occur on the riverfront, and to people living in buildings that are five floors high on the Banks?”

        “The stadium speaks to the future in terms of geometry, but does it have the appropriate scale to other human activities occuring in the vicinity?”

        Mr. Doepke does like the dramatic modern design of the stadium, which breaks with Cincinnati tradition.

        “I'm not offended that it feels out of place (with Cincinnati's traditional look). In fact I think it starts to move toward a geometry that is more of the organic nature that relates to the river ... the large sweeping lines and the lines of the hillsides.”

Few corner seats
        What you see first are the two sweeping roof elements, or the “gull wings,” the stadium's most notable features.

        “That's not architecture. It's marketing,” quipped Cincinnati architect Terry Brown of Hyde Park, an adjunct professor of architecture at UC. “It's the Nike Swoosh.”

The supporting structure that holds the canopy. | ZOOM |

        The inspiration did come from that, Mr. Turner admitted. “In the early schemes we literally had a swoosh, bigger at one end and tapered at the other. It actually came down almost to the ground at one side, but in the end it is symmetrical.”

        The gull wings reflect the desire to put as many seats on the 50-yard line as possible, noted William Brown. (Neither William Brown nor Terry Brown is related to the Bengals' owners.)

        Mr. Turner: “When we first met with (Bengals President) Mike Brown, he said that "every stadium that I'm seeing in the NFL is pretty symmetrical. You end up with corner seats that people don't want to buy. Is there a way to break the bowl so that you can have as many seats as possible on the sidelines?' That gave us our cue.”

"Almost in motion'
        The outer walls are divided into sections of different materials and patterns to diminish the mass. It also communicates, through de sign, the relationship of the exterior to interior spaces.

        Drive around it, Mr. Niland said. “You don't have to go more than 10 or 15 feet. ... The character of the building changes.”

        “We were looking for a building that you could look at and feel that it was almost in motion,” Mr. Turner said. “A lot of walls angle out. At the end of walls where materials overlap we sort of sliced them at an angle so there are different layers of the building peeking out all the time so you could begin to understand what's behind them.”

        The experience of being inside the stadium is equally important.

        “It's not only being able to see into the building and through the building. It's also being inside the building and being able to see out,” Mr. Turner said.

        “You've never been able to do that at Cinergy. You ... really don't know what side you're on and you don't know where the city is. It's much nicer to know exactly where you are all the time.”

        Standing inside Paul Brown Stadium, “there's a magnificent sense of space,” Mr. Niland said. Because the seating is one muted color, “your focus is on the field.”

Dynamic presence
        Football games occur only a few days a year, so Mr. Turner said his firm wanted the design to stand on its own as sculpture.

        “We want do buildings that always will raise the bar and be important civic structures, em blematic in their city in all ways.”

        At night, all through the year, the plan is to keep the gull wing roof illuminated, Mr. Turner said. “Before the lights went on, I think there were people who didn't even think about the stadium being there. Once the lights went on in the evening people are saying. "Oh my gosh. What an amazing thing that is!'”

        Mrs. Blackburn welcomes the challenge of competing with the stadium. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a grouping of three five-story buildings, will be between the two sports facilities.

        “Stadiums have been thought of more for functional aspects than for their aesthetics, and clearly the architects of the stadium have thought of those issues,” Mrs. Blackburn said, “not just to function, but to make a rather dynamic presence on the riverfront. I applaud them for that.

        “It has posed some challenges, but I see it as an opportunity because they help us create a sense of place. The Freedom Center will become a natural landmark and identifiable in its location because of the two stadiums.”

        Paul Brown Stadium is rather imposing, Mrs. Blackburn offered. “It looks both daring and dramatic, and that can't harm the attractiveness of the development on the river.”

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