Leading Sports and Entertainment Architect Joins Head Woods Bagot Sport

August 21, 2012

Global design and consulting firm, Woods Bagot, have announced that the architect behind the Staples Centre and Paul Brown Stadium will lead the firm’s new global group, Woods Bagot Sport.

Dan Meis, the award-winning sports and entertainment architect who is also known for his work at Safeco Field in Seattle and Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, will become the new Global Director of the new group.

Meis’s new role will be to expand his Los Angeles-based team to include design and technical experts in New York, London and Sydney.

The new group will continue Meis’s current projects including the new NFL Stadium at Grand Crossing in Los Angeles and a 50,000 seat, multi-use venue for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Meis is also leading conceptual design efforts for a new stadium for Serie A club AS Roma and Sports City Stadium in Doha, Qatar, for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Ross Donaldson, Woods Bagot’s Global Managing Director, said: “The formidable economics of sports development is spurring new models for state-of-the-art, year-round destinations and innovative approaches to their development, design and delivery.

“With Dan’s deep expertise in the sports sector and Woods Bagot’s diverse capabilities—from planning mixed-use urban districts, to advanced technical design, to supporting public-private partnerships—our Global Studio now offers the breadth of knowledge this new era requires.”

The architect, who was previously a co-founding partner of NBBJ Sports and Entertainment, said: “One challenge of being an expert in anything is recognizing when to think outside the box of the proven approaches.

“And this unprecedented sea change in the sports-entertainment experience driven by advancing display and mobile technologies, social media and 24/7 sports networks, calls for fresh thinking.

“We’ve tuned Woods Bagot Sport to deliver highly creative and innovative solutions that recognize the opportunity this evolving building type represents and help owners to develop new revenues.”

About Woods Bagot

Woods Bagot is a leading global design and consulting firm, with a team of over 800 people working across Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. The firm’s unique ‘Global Studio’ philosophy drives unprecedented knowledge sharing and true collaboration across time zones, producing innovative, inspired and functional design solutions for clients. Underpinning Woods Bagot’s knowledge culture is Public, their research arm, created in collaboration with leading thinkers and academics.

With a 140-year legacy of design excellence, Woods Bagot has been recognised with nearly 50 global awards over the past two years, including WAN 2012 winner for St Vincent’s Private Hospital Young Adults Mental Health Unit (Healthcare Centre); Asia Pacific Property Award 2012 for Shijiazhuang International Exhibition & Convention Centre (Best Public Service Architecture, China); AJ 100’s International Practice of 2009 and the Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) award in 2011.

The firm’s diverse portfolio of high-profile projects includes: China Southern Airport City (Guangzhou), South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), National Australia Bank (Melbourne), 100 Bishopsgate (London), Qatar’s Science and Technology Park (QSTP), Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Centre (in joint venture with NHArchitecture), Ivy, Sydney (in collaboration with Merivale, Cornwell Design, Hecker Phelan and Guthrie), the Nakheel Tall Tower (Dubai) and Sunshine Insurance Tower (Beijing) and Shijiazhung Convention Center in China