© Florian Holzherr

SOM’s principal design objectives were to create a focused learning and working environment that would give the New York Jets a competitive edge by constantly reminding the players and business staff that football is their business, and creating a campus that would prioritize work, education and health.

More photographs of the Atlantic Health Jets Training Facility and drawings following the break.

Architects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP/ New York
Location: Florham Park, New Jersey, USA
Design Partner in Charge: Roger Duffy
Project Manager: Christopher McCready
Project Architect: Darrell Puffer
Project Area: 133,275 sqf Campus Building 84,286 sqf Field House
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Florian Holzherr

© Florian Holzherr

The entire facility is organized around the football fields so views of the fields are always immediate from the moment of entering the 600-foot-long building. The design integrates the yard integers of the field into the building’s lighting and other finishes, another constant reminder that football is the main order of the day.

SOM carefully considered the adjacencies and relationships between the various program elements to ensure the maximum efficiencies within the highly complex and varied program of the building, and also to create the necessary separation between the players and football staff and the business operations. The plans of the facility allows the daily operations to occur with a high degree of efficiency, both in terms of player’s daily routines and the necessary back-of- house operations that support the team and allow the team to move with ease from the training center to the home stadium to the airport. The equipment, media and other support areas are situated so that they can support coaches and players seamlessly and transparently.

© Florian Holzherr

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The massing of the building was among the most significant considerations of the design. The low, two-story mass of the office/training center was situated to reduce the perceived mass of the100-foot-high field house. This taller building was carefully sited to screen the site to the south, while not casting shadows on the practice field, with the campus building – with its lower massing stepping down to a one-story height at the playing fields to enclose the central field like a stadium. On the east is the business operations and media entry; with the football operations and player entrance on the west side. Two lines of wooded wetlands enclose the site on the east and west providing additional screening and combined with the built structures provide a cloistered environment for the practice fields in order to limit distractions.

© Florian Holzherr

Simulating the stadium experience was another major design consideration because the Jets believe that a close approximation of the stadium will help prepare players and coaches for game day. SOM created a high coaches’ balcony on the exterior of the building’s second story; it stretches from the 20 to the 50 yard line and allows the coaches to practice calling plays from the high boxes they use during games, to the field. In addition, all of the practice fields match the solar orientation of the field at the new stadium, and one is illuminated for nighttime practice. The interior of the field house has the clearance needed for a true-game experience (95-foot-high clearance for punting).

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Synchronized clocks are located throughout the building; coaches demand that everyone is on time and their schedule is rigorous.
The landscape design incorporates decorative fencing and evergreen planting to define and screen different precincts of the site and to give scale to the building where it meets the ground.

© Florian Holzherr

Campus building is a two-story steel structure clad in flat and corrugated metal panels and low-iron glass. Perforated corrugated metal covers the exterior mechanical areas. The campus building’s roof is covered in a light-colored membrane, while the field house has a standing-seam metal roof. Players’ gallery is cantilevered which allows for thin glass curtain wall and no columns. Field house is a long-span rigid frame.

© Florian Holzherr