The largest, most advanced sports venue in the NFL

By Kara Socol

When the Texas A&M football team takes on the University of Arkansas on Oct. 3 at the new Cowboys Stadium, Bryan Trubey ’83 plans to have one of the best seats in the house. But when it comes to knowing about the "best seats," Trubey has an advantage: He directed the team that designed the 3 million-square-foot stadium in Arlington.

Trubey, who earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental design from Texas A&M, is a design principal at Dallas-based HKS Inc. -- a firm that, with Trubey’s financial support, annually offers a sports design studio for Aggie architecture students.

Upon HKS’s selection as architect of the $1.5 billion Cowboys Stadium, Trubey says he was challenged to create a building that was international in quality -- a structure that could hold its own when compared architecturally to the world’s most important buildings. The stadium likewise needed to be versatile and big.

To say the resulting stadium is the largest-ever NFL venue only scratches the surface of this architectural wonder. A quarter-mile in length, the seating bowl is the most spacious column-free room in the world, holding more than 100,000 spectators. Each of the two monumental arches that support the stadium’s retractable roof is longer than St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

Then there’s the center-hung video board, also peerless in size. Weighing 1.2 million pounds and 11 stories tall, the board equals 4,920 52-inch flat-panel TVs. In fact, technicians use an elevator inside the board to move around.

Trubey says a major part of the stadium design process went beyond its use as a professional football arena. "We knew that if we designed it correctly, we were going to have the capability to host international events," he says.

Musicians Paul McCartney, the Jonas Brothers, George Strait and Reba McEntire already performed at the stadium, and rock band U2 has an October concert scheduled. In January, Cowboys Stadium will host the AT&T Cotton Bowl college football game, followed in February by the NBA All-Star basketball game.

While Trubey’s team drafted the stadium as an architectural showplace, the family of Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones also wanted it to appeal to fine art aficionados. Included in the stadium design are 14 murals and sculptures by famous artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Franz Ackermann. "Our vision was to make the building not only a sports venue, but a worldwide destination for art," Trubey says.

But the most exciting part of designing the stadium, Trubey says, is experiencing the transition from idea to computer model to a constructed building.

"It’s like being a sculptor with a sculpture in mind, but you don’t really know what it will be like until it’s finished. I’m looking forward to sitting in different places in the stadium just to see what they’re like."

To view more photos of Cowboys Stadium, click here.

To learn more about supporting Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, contact Larry Zuber at the Texas A&M Foundation: (800) 392-3310.