With eyes on Washington's new stadium opening in 2030, *Commanders.com* is sitting down with key actors and decision-makers involved in the historic project. Selected as the project's lead stadium architect last November, HKS has redefined sports venue design through architecture that elevates the fan experience and sets new benchmarks for innovation and sponsorship integration.

Mark Williams, HKS partner and Executive Vice President, has assisted in designing some of the world's most-recognized venues including SoFi Stadium, AT&T Stadium and U.S. Bank Stadium. The Executive Partner is thrilled to help write the next chapter in the history of the RFK site.

Q: This build was a highly sought-after project. What do you think made HKS stand out as the right architecture and design firm for the job?

A: "There are a couple things that come to mind. One, what is unique about HKS and our practice is we look at these venues as one-of-one creations. This building type for centuries has had a lot of repetitiveness to it, a lot of taking components from different venues, different cities and doing the same thing in the next city, and we don't do that at all. So, we talked a lot about the uniqueness of the organization, the uniqueness of the site in Washington, D.C. and wanting to create a one-of-one experience that could only go there. When you go there, you know it was made for that region, and it could go nowhere else. That's the first thing I think the organization and leadership recognized about HKS.

We also have a very experienced team that we've leveraged on this project. This is our seventh NFL stadium, if you include what we did in Canton, Ohio, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Most of the senior leadership on the team has worked on all those projects. So, we're carrying that knowledge and that experience through. I think that was recognized.

Those venues that I talked about in the industry are the best performing venues out there. You can look at it from an experiential side. Fan bases for several years now have voted our stadiums at the top of league, and that stands the test of time. And then from a performance side, whether you're looking at revenue or food and beverage sales or products in the seating bowl, we were at the top of the league, too. So, I think the combination of all those things stood out from the ownership team's vantage point."

Q: How do you decide what are must-haves for these modern stadiums and then what is specific to each stadium project?

A: "First and foremost, we do a lot of listening upfront. We listen to our clients and try to understand what they want to create, what their priorities are. We do very deep dive research analysis for the region, the site, the fan base, the demographics, how sponsors play into it.

And a lot of times those things really help us to 'find' the project is the best way that I put it. If you listen to those things, if you have the data and the information and understand it and filter it, that brings out the definition of the project. The other thing that I think is the most important is, even though we have the knowledge, even though we have the experience, we're very open to exploring.

A lot of times that innovation piece comes through that exploration. The research, the exploration, the data, all really define the project. And if you look at all our projects, they were built specifically for that situation, for that city, for that organization. And that only happens if you're open to going down roads, whether you choose to do certain things or not, but allowing yourself to be open to helping in a much broader way to find what the project is."

Q: With a project like this, how do you start thinking about putting everything together?

A: "It really starts with identifying the handful of qualities and characteristics that you want to provide in the building. If you look at the seating bowl, for example; if you look at the massing of the project and the exterior; if you look at the site, you start at a high level and start to define those bigger moves, those bigger components within the building using all those characteristics. That's really the starting point for us."

Q: What inspired the design?

A: "The incredible passion the ownership team had from minute one. Mr. Harris talked a lot about being eight years old and walking into RFK Stadium. And you could feel that passion as if that happened last week with him. And he has carried that and will carry that all the way through his whole life. That is so impactful to his experience. So the passion from ownership was one big thing.

The significance of the memories of RFK Stadium was another piece. For decades, people have been yearning to be able to go watch the Commanders again in RFK Stadium and have not had the ability to do that.

The monumentality and the architecture of Washington, D.C. as a whole and the impact that has was a big influence, the way that those buildings have inspired how people approach them and go into them and walk through them. We want to translate that experience to a multi-purpose sports and entertainment project. I have told many people that it's probably the most prominent, best site in the world to have a sports and entertainment project. And it even goes back to the original L'Enfant Plan for Washington, D.C. From the beginning, that was always the site that was going to be the sports and entertainment component, whatever that meant.

So those are the big things. Using that great passion from the site, the ownership team's connection to the historic RFK, and coupling that with our knowledge and our expertise, we're thinking about how we can make it all even better for fans that go in there."

Q: A lot of new stadiums claim to be the loudest, to get you the closest, to have the best you name it – things which feel ambiguous or are hard to measure. You want to be able to say emphatically you are elite in all these categories, of course, but it also seems to be a tough line to toe making those sorts of statements. How do you think about those things?

A: "One of the special things that we're doing in D.C. is what we're calling a unified seating bowl. The entire seating bowl feels like one section, one unified group, from the first row all the way to the last row, instead of breaking up the bowl into different parts and different areas.

And at the same time, we have a very diverse number of products that we have spread out throughout that bowl. Historically, what has happened was you had a continuous bowl, then as time went on, that bowl started to break apart and there were different zones, club seats, suites, end zone, you name it. And it was very defined on those different elements.

We've sort of come back and combined both of them. So it's the power of that unified bowl while having diverse products and price points and things you can do with amenities – all that's attached to different areas within the bowl. We've done both of those. It's extremely unique.

Then, if you think about the history of integrating and immersing people into the technology within the seating bowl, it sort of went from, 'Here's a big monitor' and then the next one did a little bit bigger, then the next one did a little bit bigger, and so on. With the Cowboys we moved the location of that monitor, really in response to broadcast television and getting that view bigger and better than what you have at home and also putting it right there in front of you. We then took that to the next level at SoFi with having the two-sided board.

What we're going to do in D.C. for the Commanders is going to be a whole new level. I think it's going to be one of the most recognizable elements in the seating bowl. I can't wait for people to walk in there and see this unified seating bowl."

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the flexibility that this venue will allow for as far as use by the community and use by the city on non-Commanders gamedays?

A: "One of our design covenants is that we make the building very scalable. We do that at a site level. We do that within the stadium itself. So, there are numerous spaces that we want to make as flexible as possible. There might be a club space in the stadium that becomes the place to host if you're having an event in the District, for example.

We also take that to the event type. So, instead of waiting for the Commanders game to happen, we want to have it where the building can host different capacities, different event types, that we can have as many of those things happen throughout the year. There are events like soccer matches or concerts or other pretty predictable things, but we are thinking on day one about other diverse things that could happen within individual spaces, within the seating bowl, maybe different size capacities.

It all sort of goes to the fact that these buildings are magnets for people. They want to be in them. They want to be by them. They want to have their events inside of them, whether that's a birthday party or the Super Bowl. And we do the same thing with the site. Maybe a group of Boy Scouts has their meeting in one of the plazas next to the stadium. If we give them a choice of five places to have their meeting, they're highly likely going to pick the Commanders' stadium. That's the magic and the power of the building type."

Q: What sort of unique features have you thought about implementing based on what our ownership team wanted to make come to life?

A: "In addition to, say, the seating bowl and video integration, we should talk a little about the connectivity, not only to the site, but the connectivity to the exterior. The roof that we are proposing will have an incredible connectivity to the exterior. The sunlight will filter through, and when you're sitting in the seating bowl, you're going to feel, more than in any other enclosed NFL stadium, like you're in an outdoor venue. One of the most unique things about the site is you've got this very strong axis that is known around the world, and we're one of the jewels on that necklace. At the same time, if you just go to the other end zone, you have this very natural connection to water, to the natural environment. And you don't often get that type of connectivity on a football field. So, we're leveraging those phenomenal things and making that part of the experience."

Q: The stadium is the center piece of 180 acres that will also include mixed-use space. Do you have to think about the stadium setup differently because of that component?

A: "Yes, and yes. The first yes is anytime we have other elements, other components that are on our site, we need to think about how those are folded into the overall master plan.

But, I think the second yes is the bigger yes, and I think that's the piece that separates HKS from others. We really think about those components and how to truly leverage those with the stadium. We don't want to just have them adjacent, which is the mindset of a lot of people working on these kinds of projects. They're thinking, 'We're going to have a hotel next to us. We're going to have retail next to us.'

At HKS, we want to embed those components. We want to integrate those. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're touching, but how do you make that so that that is a seamless experience when you're approaching the site, walking through the site, walking into the stadium or walking into a hotel. All those patrons or people that are walking through there are going to want to touch and feel and be around a lot of those different components.

It takes work and collaboration with the other Commanders partners working on the mixed-use site. It's really trying to make one plus one equals five instead of one plus one equals two. And not being satisfied with, 'Yes, this great thing is next to us'; it's how do we bring those two pieces together and elevate them together?"

Q: What's been the most rewarding part of this process so far?

"I talk a lot about the power of this building type and the impact that it has on people. And I can tell you that this project, this organization and this site have taken that to much higher levels. The world is watching the Commanders, and the world is excited about this site. The world is excited about the NFL having a home back in the District. You can see it with the amount of people that are loving what we've shown on social media, and it's early. We've shown a lot, but we have a lot, lot, lot more to show.

So that power of the project, that impact of an NFL stadium, to me, that's the most rewarding thing. What we create and what we do on that site has a global impact. It affects so many people. It's going to create so many memories.

All the people that talk about RFK and a lot of the historical stuff, we're going to create those kinds of memories for so many people, for decades, with what we do. It doesn't get any better than that to me. It makes everything worth it, knowing that you're going to have this huge impact on, say, an eight-year-old boy, who was a version of Mr. Harris years ago. It's amazing stuff."