AD provided consulting services for the new Philadelphia Eagles Stadium. The project showcases huge video scoreboards, a zoned sound system and luxury suites with Internet access and high-definition television.

NBBJ's concept for the architecture was unique. Rather than the traditional bowl design, the stadium features three open-plaza corners for entries and views of the city and into the stadium. 172 luxury suites are located above and below the club seating level. The stadium experience is very intimate because front row seats are only 60 feet from the playing field.

Well beyond being merely structurally distinctive, the stadium boasts a number of novel approaches to audio and video as well.

"The architectural design is unique in how it allows the outside landscape to visually come into the stadium, and in doing so it creates specific seating blocks," AD’s Steve Shull continues. "When we did the speaker design, we had a lot of radically different places to accommodate hanging the speakers - this was definitely not a 'one size fits all' installation. We really wanted to avoid making the speakers part of the visual design as much as possible, and we tucked a lot of them under the fascia rather than outside it. That was good in that it allowed us to use the underside of the seating deck to push up the volume of some of the cabinets."

"The fascia itself is dominated by the LED displays, and one of the major concerns was keeping the lines of sight as uninterrupted as was practical," elaborates Craig Janssen, AD's principal designer. "When we looked at the building design, there was a limited number of locations we could place the speakers. NBBJ were very conscious of the need for good audio in the stadium, but clearly you're not going to move an entire seating deck just to accommodate a loudspeaker."

The control room also hosts a high-end editing suite, complete with Avid Symphony, DS-HD and Unity video editing and server equipment. The facility is available for live stadium productions, coaches' shows and other television production uses.

The video displays cover practically the full width of the field, creating a magnitude of scale that's at once lifelike and unreal. There are also LED displays on the sidelines. LED boards will eventually be installed on the lower fascia as well, which will give the visual impression of one continuous video ribbon around the entire stadium.