ARCHITECTURE
MEIS ARCHITECTS
CAREER
GOALS
World-renowned architect Dan Meis explains
why quality over quantity is a winning formula
for sports stadium architecture and design
the world’s leading sports architects were based in this
one, relatively small city. Unable to land an interview
with HOK or HNTB, two of the busiest companies,
Meis talked his way into Ellerbe Becket (now part
of AECOM) and was hired on the spot. It was the
beginning of a sports design career that included roles
at large firms such as NBBJ, Aedas and Populous.
Over the next three decades, Meis designed
several high-profile stadia and arenas including the
Los Angeles Staples Center, Paul Brown Stadium in
Cincinnati, Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, Lincoln Financial
Field in Philadelphia and Tokyo’s Saitama Arena. He
also assisted with the successful Qatar 2022 FIFA
World Cup bid.
Small but mighty
In 2007, Meis formed his own company, first in
Los Angeles, then soon after in New York.
“It was always assumed that clients wouldn’t select
a smaller sized firm to design what is a complex project
with a construction value that can exceed several
hundred million dollars for even an average-sized
project,” he says. “As I had learned early in my career,
however, creativity and innovation were important to
professional team owners as well. They were selling
to their fans unique and authentic experiences, not
just proper sightlines and concourse widths. I could
demonstrate that the design talent I could assemble
in New York and Los Angeles brought more to the
table than simply the technical expertise necessary
to design a stadium.”
Initially hired to design a new NFL stadium in
Los Angeles in hopes of attracting a franchise from
the USA’s most valuable League back to the city (the
I loved the idea of designing big buildings
that had a powerful impact on cities,” says
Dan Meis, managing director of Meis
Architects. With offices in Los Angeles and
New York, Meis has projects spanning the
globe, including two very high-profile stadia currently
in design – Stadio della Roma for AS Roma and the
recently revealed stadium at Bramley Moore Dock
for Everton Football Club.
However, Meis never intended to become a stadium
architect. He trained in Chicago under Helmut Jahn,
the colorful and prolific designer of glass and steel
skyscrapers, where much of Meis’ early exposure to
high-profile architecture was spent building models
of 100-story towers in Frankfurt, Chicago, New York
and Johannesburg.
“Helmut Jahn taught me two very important skills:
one was the power of a sketch. He was incredibly fast
and could do with a fountain pen what no computer
could. He could demonstrate ideas on-the-fly in an
almost magical way,” Meis says. “The second was
the power of design to distinguish a project. Every
developer wanted their project to be different to attract
buyers and tenants. While there was little difference
between the stacks of identical floors of office spaces
or apartments, he brought a flair to his architecture
that stood apart from almost everything else being
done at that time.”
In the early 1990s, the market for new office
buildings had stalled. Growing tired of working on
buildings that never left the drawing table, Meis took
the advice of a friend and flew to Kansas City, Missouri,
in the hope of arranging an interview. Through an odd
coincidence of timing and opportunity, a number of
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