This month will mark the unveiling of the $338-million Moody Center arena on the University of Texas at Austin campus. In addition to hosting the university’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, the multi-purpose venue is slated to become a major entertainment destination for concerts and events.

“The Moody Center will become the premier entertainment venue in Austin—it’s a place that welcomes everyone to come together and experience the best in live music and college basketball,” says Jeff Nickler, senior vice president and general manager with The Oak View Group (OVG), part of the development team.

穆迪中心的愿景是避免以前的竞技场的封闭性质，并为竞技场服务的社区创造更有机的东西。

竞技场设有360度玻璃窗帘墙，可让用户欣赏奥斯汀地标的景色。
Photos by Ryan Conway/Gensler

他说：“从第一天开始，穆迪中心的最大想法是确保奥斯汀，城市和其在镇上最大的音乐场所之间存在牢固的联系。”

结果是一种准透明的设计，使听众可以在建筑物中看到，同时向外面的人们提供室内景观。该设计导致了树冠的创建，盖盖提供了阴影，同时还可以在整个建筑物中开放。露台可欣赏大学和奥斯汀市中心的全景。

用于建筑冠层的镶板材料适用于内部和外部使用，从而无缝过渡到天花板材料。
Photos by Ryan Conway/Gensler

70000平方英尺树冠是一个木材产品,ParlexProdema, that was panelized and assembled on an engineered backing panel. As the material is suitable for both indoor and outdoor applications, it allowed a consistent thematic element throughout the structure. The canopy outside the building essentially becomes the ceiling and wall surface within the building, framed by a 360-degree glass curtain wall. The center also includes a curtain system that allows the exterior views to be blocked off for specific events such as concerts.

“The upper bowl screen is a system of aluminum framed, fabric-wrapped panels that pivot down from the roof trusses to the bottom edge of the upper bowl,” says Gensler architect Laura Brodersen. “The system operates in three sections: north, east and south to conceal varying sections of seats of the upper bowl depending on an event’s capacity.”

除了在大学校园的狭窄区域建造外，竞技场的高度还受到对封锁视线限制德克萨斯州议会大厦的限制。
Photos by Ryan Conway/Gensler

Realizing a Vision

喜怒无常的中心will replace the Frank Erwin Center as the indoor sports arena for the University of Texas. The former venue was retired this year after 42 years of service. Often referred to as The Drum, the two-tiered facility could accommodate 16,500 people for basketball games and up to 17,900 people for concerts and events.

In 2017, the University of Texas President’s Real Estate Advisory Council, Stafford Sports and Gensler began working together to establish a public-private partnership (P3) structure for the proposed Moody Center that outlined financial business terms, infrastructure improvements, development schedule and conceptual design.

They also analyzed various on- and off-campus site options and chose a 7.5-acre location for the arena north of the Erwin Center and adjacent to the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

喜怒无常的中心位移通风系统通过使用每个座椅下方的通风孔冷却，因此在冷却地板上方的空空间时不会浪费能量。
Photos by Ryan Conway/Gensler

Gensler校长兼董事总经理Todd Runkle解释说：“通过概念设计捕捉大学的愿景和需求是有利的，可以帮助吸引开发人员的兴趣并定义该项目的经济细节。”

OVG和CAA图标被选为2018年的开发和项目管理合作伙伴。根据P3协议，他们将资助该项目并管理穆迪中心35年。

OVG与Partners Live Nation和C3礼物一起将获得来自竞技场举行的德克萨斯州所有非大学的收益。已经预订了音乐会和其他价值超过1500万美元的音乐会和其他活动。该大学将仍然是所有者，并保留举办篮球比赛，毕业和其他活动的权利。

Gensler is leading the design and AECOM-Hunt is serving as general contractor.

喜怒无常的中心will boast a 530,000-sq-ft layout that includes 10,000 seats for sports events and as many as 15,000 for concerts and events.

由于竞技场位置在山上，设计师能够使用地理位置为每个级别而不是单个主入口创建直接访问。
Photos by Ryan Conway/Gensler

幕后

尽管外部的清洁设计至关重要，但场地的功能对于其成功至关重要。将现代娱乐场所所需的必要要素整合到无缝结构中，这对设计团队来说是一个重大挑战。

“这座建筑物中有很大的部分，该建筑物的大部分地区都不会知道。但是最终，这些要素将成为这座建筑的真正成功。”艾米特说。“拥有像OVG这样的所有权集团，他们真正了解这些建筑物的工作原理及其运作方式，这使我们成为了一个非常有效的建筑。”

为了协调所有这些“后台”元素，例如机械，电气和管道工程，同时保留了一致的构建美学，Gensler Designers用数字模型倾斜了广泛的背景。

穆迪中心旨在容纳10,000名观众参加体育赛事，并为音乐会和其他活动提供多达15,000个观众。
渲染由Gensler/Design Illustration Group LLC提供

“We took a lot of the same precision that we use on smaller projects and dialed up to that larger scale,” says Gensler design director John Houser. “Everything was modeled, and we would then fly around that model daily to identify any conflicts between MEP and structure and architecture early on in the process.”

An example of how foresight and preparation allowed the inclusion of innovative ideas is the Moody Center’s displacement ventilation system for climate control. Instead of a conventional air conditioning system that blows colder air down onto the event space, the Moody Center’s system works in reverse. Air vents are set below each of the seats in the venue, pushing the cooler air directly into the arena area.

“It kind of flips the whole model upside down,” Houser says. “But these are not systems that you get halfway through the project and decide to integrate. They really affect the way you think about the overall strategy.”

系统提供了一种节约成本降低waste of cooling air in the dead space above the event space and even allows the system to operate in specific areas as needed. But it required integrating a complex design element into an already complicated process.

The Dell Technology Plaza outside of the arena serves as a connection to the other athletic and entertainment venues on the east side of the University of Texas Campus.
渲染由Gensler/Design Illustration Group LLC提供

场地复杂性

From its inception, the Moody Center was planned as a key element for a sports and entertainment district on the east side of the University of Texas campus where several of the university’s athletic facilities are located. Fitting into that location came with an enormous tradeoff, Houser says.

他说：“挑战是可用的土地。”“大学校园里没有很多东西，需要将设施造成一个非常小的网站。”

The site restrictions extended beyond the geographic footprint. The location is subject to a legal restriction called a Capitol View Corridor, enacted to preserve the view of the Texas State Capitol. This applies to Interstate 35 that runs adjacent to the site and effectively imposed a cap on the Moody Center’s height.

除常规座位外，该中心还设有44个套房和门廊套房，四个高级俱乐部空间和2,000个俱乐部座位。
渲染由Gensler/Design Illustration Group LLC提供

布罗德森说：“我们开玩笑说，该地点在所有六个方面都受到限制。”“通常您只有站点边界，但这也受到顶部和底部边界的限制。”

Since the site is located on the side of a hill with a 45-ft drop from east to west, the building height limitation meant the east side of the structure had to be 75 ft underground. But there were advantages to be found as well. The site’s incline allowed the arena to be built with walk-in access at every level rather than having a single entrance and requiring patrons to climb to the seating areas.

公用事业提出了另一个重大挑战。许多城市和大学公用事业都贯穿穆迪中心地区。这些公用事业冲突必须在开始进行所需的挖掘以及道路重新调整之前就必须解决。布罗德森说，这是项目团队，城市和大学之间的“巨大协调”工作。所有公用事业都经过垂直映射，以确保可以通过网站路由不会发生冲突。

An example of the scale of the problem was the loading dock beneath the building. Since the site did not have space for a traditional street-level loading dock, a 35-ft-long ramp was built under the main plaza on the west side of the building. The complicating factor was the presence of several key utility lines that conflicted with the planned tunnel. To keep the project on track, a small portion of the tunnel was built and the utilities routed over it.

Houser说：“我们有效地建造了一座混凝土桥，这只是未来隧道的一小部分，因此我们可以运行《公用事业》第1天。”“最终，其余的发掘与之相遇，并将该隧道延伸到其全长。”

Completing the 100,000-sq-ft ramp was critical for access to the site during construction. Additionally, it lies completely below the Dell Technology Plaza, which is essentially the front door to the Moody Center and serves as the keystone connection to all the venues in the sports and entertainment district.

That plaza will feature several large oak trees already on site at the start of construction. While a couple of trees on one side of the site were protected and left in place, several others had to be temporarily relocated.

Heritage oaks are strongly associated with Austin, and retaining some of these 200-year-old trees was a priority for the team. It was a complicated process to safely move a tree of that size. The access ramp built for the center had to be designed to handle the load of moving the trees.

“从成品的角度来看，这些树木的价值是无法估量的，” Houser说。“他们为整个项目创造了这种建立感，并真正帮助将穆迪中心从第1天开始融入更大的校园。”

The project involved several elements beyond the construction of the center itself. These included building a new basketball practice facility adjacent to the arena and reconstructing a key thoroughfare, Red River Street, for the east side of the UT campus around the site.

附近的其他建筑努力（例如足球场的17500万南端区域项目）使小型现场的建设活动数量更加复杂。关闭红河街的设备和材料的协调通道，因为它有效地创建了两条道路进入该地点。

COVID-19 lockdowns had an unexpected upside for the project by limiting the activity on campus and allowing construction efforts to continue unabated. At one point during the excavation operations, more than 400 trucks were moving in and out of the site per day. A total of 285,000 cu yd of material was excavated.

“这个项目的成功故事是，每个人（设计团队，客户端，大学）都认为竞技场可以成为这个真正特殊的地方，人们在生活中创造了这些令人难以置信的回忆，” Houser说。“在此过程中，有很多人共同努力解决挑战，并提出了真正的新颖解决方案，使这一愿景成为现实。”