AECOM is a leading infrastructure development company founded in 1990, dedicated to delivering a better world by improving access through creating spaces that are socially valuable, elevating communities, and coming up with innovative and sustainable solutions. AECOM delivers professional services in building, water, energy, transportation, and the environment with a team that consists of planners, designers, engineers, consultants, construction managers, etc.
Intuit Dome
AECOM is the lead designer of the Intuit Dome. It is an indoor arena currently under construction in Inglewood, California. Located close to the SoFi Stadium, the Intuit Dome is going to act as the future home of the LA Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) set to open in the year 2024-25.
Intuit dome is a cutting-edge, highly developed entertainment location and outdoor plaza dedicated to basketball, designed to deliver an intimate and immersive experience. It is designed to bring fans close to the actions, creating an exceptionally powerful game day experience possible, and transforming the way people come together and cheer.
The team of AECOM aimed to create a distinctive, high-performance, unique design that is symbolic of the characteristics of the LA Clippers and the city itself. A statement design that is powerful, community-driven, aesthetic, and most of all, devoted to creating an exciting experience. The design of the dome is inspired by the delicate form of the basketball net when the ball passes through it depicted by a diagrid geometrical framework made of steel which is both structurally viable and visually dynamic and the first thing that one would see in the structure. The skin of the building is made of diagonally intersecting metal panels woven together forming a series of diamond shapes that have multiple uses that adapt over the different regions of the building.
Intuit dome will take into account the climate of Southern California which is appropriate for a construction approach that works both indoors and outdoors which includes natural ventilation of the entrance foyer and upper lobby. The skin of the building has solar panels embedded in it for optimum usage resulting in both solar heat gain and natural light inside the building.
Intuit dome is not only the new house for the LA Clippers but is also an entertainment venue consisting of a multipurpose plaza that will house a concert stage, community basketball courts, public gathering space for community engagement, the team’s administrative offices, and training facilities. The unique traits of the arena building put it in the most advanced category of the typology since it will provide a multi-dimensional experience.
Since that start, the dome is committed to carbon neutrality, which is a first for arenas, globally. The dome will have no new greenhouse gas emissions functioning on electricity through batteries and solar power with enough on-site energy storage that can power a basketball match or a concert. Another attribute that the dome would feature is a full-scale waste reduction program to eliminate landfill waste in situ and other substantial programs to improve regional air quality. It will also monitor the annual greenhouse gas emissions and impacts of transportation. A large-scale venue that will work towards a sustainable goal to reduce carbon emissions and in the process provide the required data for the betterment of the community, a collective effort for a transformation towards a low carbon future. It will also be the only sports arena in the world built using concrete that has carbon embodied in it. Aspiration, another added founding partner of the Intuit Dome, will embed sustainability services throughout the fan experience.
The foremost purpose of the dome is obviously basketball, the arena comprising of 18,000 seats prioritizes the Clippers fans and game experience through a seat organization called the seating ball organization which means ‘no bad seats and a two-sided oval-shaped scoreboard with 44,000 square feet of LED lights, almost double the amount of light a general center-hung scoreboard in any NBA arena has. The seats would also have technology integrated that would allow access to food and beverages at one’s seat.
Although an extensive amount of attention to detail and innovation has gone into the design of the Intuit Dome, its location and connection to the context were equally critical both socially and sustainably. The LA Clippers worked with the city of Inglewood to create a positive impact on the community by funding schools, housing, jobs, and infrastructure in the process of developing the arena.
The design team of the Intuit Dome includes Anderson Barker Architects, Hood Design Studio, City Design Studio, Walter P. Moore, Henderson Engineering, and Labib Funk & Associates, among many other companies along with AECOM. AECOM along with Hunt and Turner Construction, in a joint venture, will serve as the construction manager of the facility.
- Los Angeles Clippers: The Official Site of the Los Angeles Clippers (no date) Los Angeles Clippers | The Official Site of the Los Angeles Clippers. Available at: https://www.nba.com/clippers/intuitdomepress (Accessed: October 19, 2022).
- Intuit Dome (no date) AECOM. Available at: https://aecom.com/projects/inglewood-basketball-entertainment-center/ (Accessed: October 19, 2022).
- Intuit Dome (no date) AECOM. Available at: https://aecom.com/projects/inglewood-basketball-entertainment-center/ (Accessed: October 19, 2022).
