The Ballpark of the Future?

When the Baltimore opened Camden Yards in 1992, the Orioles ushered in the era of the retro ballpark. The new home of the O's looked like a baseball stadium from the golden age of the sport: It was open, had great sightlines, and had a classic look. It was an instant hit among baseball fans, and every new park since then has had a throwback feel.

But what will the baseball stadium of the future look like? Over at Sports Illustrated's The Strike Zone blog, writer Tim Newcomb presents one possibility.

SI asked stadium architects Populous to design the ballpark of 2034. (Populous' credits include Citi Field and Yankee Stadium in New York and Target Field in Minneapolis.) And what they dreamt up — a stadium called Living Park — is pretty wild.

"The result," writes Newcomb, "[is] a park that doesn’t simply sink into the dense urban fabric of a city, but merges with it, creating a completely new vision of stadium facades, community and interaction. The fresh take on a baseball home, as designers Brian Mirakian and Greg Sherlock called it, creates a re-imagined communal living room with some flair, such as interactive data glass, public transit lines sweeping through the park and the city built right into the venue. This is, after all, the future."

The image at the top of the post shows an overhead view of Living Park. Here's a view of it from the stands:




Head over to The Strike Zone to see more images of Living Park and read the rest of Newcomb's really interesting post!