Design Your Dream Stadium

You’re the engineer and architect! Design and build a sports stadium of your dreams.

• 1.

  <STRONG>Dream the design!</STRONG> What kind of stadium would you like to see built? It also must be "green, high-tech, and humane". What would be the purpose of a stadium for your favorite sport? How many will it seat?

• 2.

  Designing a sports stadium involves figuring out a remarkable number of details. How much space is needed for the playing field, seats, bathrooms, parking, food service, accessibility, HVAC, elevators, speakers, TV monitors, and emergency exits? What construction materials are best? Safety, economics, and environmental impact play a large part in design and construction. Sketch your design ideas with Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils.

• 3.

  <STRONG>Build a model</STRONG>. Choose the scale for your model. How big will it be? Figure out the size of the playing field and other areas. Construct an outer shell using recycled boxes or other materials. Build the infrastructure, perhaps cutting cardboard rolls with Crayola Scissors to house elevators and stairs. Bend recycled file folders into stadium seats. Add features such as a retractable roof or sliding entrance made with construction paper.

• 4.

  Cover your art area with newspaper. Paint your stadium with Crayola Paint Brushes and Premier Tempera. Air-dry the stadium.

• 5.

  Add details such as signs, playing fields, or people with Crayola Gel Markers. Assemble your dream stadium with Crayola School Glue. Let the games begin!

Benefits

• Students raise their design awareness about construction considerations for large public facilities including safety, accessibility, funding, construction materials, and space.
• Students use geometry and other mathematical skills to calculate size and scale of an imaginary sports stadium.
• Students construct a scale model of their design using recycled materials.

Adaptations

• Figure out the cost to build your stadium. The turf in one stadium cost $1.5 million. Research who pays for new stadiums and how the money is collected.
• Author J.K. Rowling designed a new game, Quidditch, for her classic Harry Potter series. Create a new spectator sport and sketch or build the place to play it.
• A stadium takes up huge tracts of land and the location can affect its success. Often neighborhoods where people live are proposed sites of new stadiums. Debate the pros and cons of construction of a stadium with students as the voices of the local people, owners, land developers, and politicians.