Barclays Center Cited In WSJ's Best In Architecture This Year

The Barclays Center is listed among the WALL STREET JOURNAL’s “Best Of 2012 In Architecture.” Julie Iovine writes the arena, designed by SHoP Architects, “is winning over Brooklyn.” The 675,000-square-foot arena “sits at the edge of a residential neighborhood,” and it is “as hulking and out of scale as feared, but locals have found it interesting enough architecturally to reconsider its potential.” The architects “animated a very basic arena form, covering it with rusted steel panels -- thousands of them, each one slightly different in size -- turning something ponderous, dynamic.” In a “bold gesture at street level, a swooping oculus projects out over the subway and commuter train stairs.” The “excitement over Barclays is mostly about sports teams coming home to Brooklyn, but credit is also due to the building's design." Architecture "really only succeeds when it's about places that work for the people closest to it” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/28).