The $425 million Target Field is the new home baseball park for the Minnesota Twins, an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Populous, the lead architectural design firm, tried to avoid creating a replica of the old-style brick Oriole Park at Camden Yards or modern urban design of the new Nationals Park, both of which designed by Populous. Instead, the design for the new stadium employs Minnesota-native materials such as Minnesota lime stone, flowers, trees and shrubs. The stadium does not have a roof, rather features a canopy. The sunshade canopy at the stadium is one of Major League Baseball’s largest and is composed of 1,988 tons of steel. Six separate levels in the new ballpark span more than one million square feet.
The ballpark’s concourse is twice as wide as those in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome – a domed sports stadium in downtown Minneapolis. The seats at the stadium are wider and have more legroom than the Metrodome.
About 50% of the construction waste has been recycled, reducing the impact on nearby landfills. The Minnesota Ballpark Authority and the Twins plan to apply for LEED certification of Target Field as a ‘green’ building. If certified, the ballpark would be only the second LEED-certified professional sports stadium in the US, after Nationals Park.
