New York Jets Unveil State-of-the-Art Training Facility Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Architecture Gains a Place in the Jets Playbook While Football is Added to SOM’s Portfolio

New York, NY: The architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM) has designed the new training facility and corporate headquarters for the New York Jets, scheduled to open on September 2nd. SOM Partner Roger Duffy designed the Florham Park, New Jersey-facility, which is the newest, largest and most ambitious and holistic training facility in the National Football League.

Every aspect of the facility is intended to provide the entire New York Jets organization - from the players and coaches to the medical team and corporate officers - with the tools that will allow them to maximize their performance. The architect’s vision was to create a focused learning and working environment that would enable the Jets to train at a higher level, with more efficiency and effectiveness and with total focus on football. Jets Owner Robert Wood (“Woody”) Johnson IV tasked SOM with creating a new forward-looking paradigm for training facilities – one that would instill a sense of pride, focus and competition in the entire organization. Johnson says, “If you have great architecture, and the architecture is designed specifically for football, you’re going to have a better team on the field.”

“When most people think about football, they don’t think about architecture,” said Roger Duffy. “But football is a business, and like any business, architecture and design can play a key role in how that business’ mission is executed – in this case, winning football games. By centering the entire facility around the heart of the game - the football field - we have designed a living chalkboard, where the players learn and focus, coaches critique and the game is improved and perfected. Our goal has always been to provide the New York Jets with a competitive advantage by creating a seamless interconnectedness of training, learning, health and fitness on one campus.”

The new facility features three natural turf football fields, one artificial turf field, outdoor sand and incline training structures, a field house with another artificial turf field, a two-story office building and other amenities. There is an auditorium and classroom seminar rooms, a coach’s atrium, two cafeterias, an owner’s suite, a corporate hospitality wing and rooms dedicated to health and fitness as well as medical training. The entire facility and grounds occupy a total of 217,561 square feet.

Among the design elements that make this facility unique are:

• All key entries to the building focus on a primary view of the football field.
• All primary interaction spaces including the coach’s atrium, learning atrium, training atrium, cafeteria and owner’s suite overlook the goal line, the 50-yard line or other views of the field.
• The integer of the yard line is integrated throughout the building – in lighting, flooring and ceilings – another constant reminder that football is the task at hand.
• Photographic murals of fans line the corridors.
• Anti-microbial materials were used throughout to minimize infections and maintain a healthy team and staff.
• Learning spaces extend out into “circulation spaces” creating an environment that encourages learning beyond the classrooms and fields.
• High quality lighting, ventilation, acoustics and technology were used throughout the facility to maximize the efficiency of training and the levels of comfort.
• Highly sophisticated audio visual systems throughout the building facilitate research, understanding and learning.
• A field house with a 95-foot-high ceiling clearance.
• A training area that includes a 12,000-square-foot weight room, locker room with careful ventilation and highly sophisticated therapy pools and equipment.

Founded in 1936, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP has undertaken more than 10,000 architecture, engineering, interior design, urban design, and planning projects in more than 50 countries. Throughout its history, SOM has been recognized with more than 800 awards for quality and innovation, more than125 of which have been received in the past 10 years. In 1996 SOM received the American Institute of Architects’ Firm Award, recognizing the distinguished design work of the firm as a whole. As the first winner of this award when it was established in 1961, SOM is the only firm to have received this prestigious honor twice. The firm currently has offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, London, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.