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August 28, 2012
Yes, The New Brooklyn Nets Arena Is Deliberately Covered With Rust. No, It’s Not A Good Idea.
Deadspin
by Jack Dickey
But when used on something more complicated and functional—such as a sports arena—this simple, natural material is incredibly finicky and unstable. Where the steel is welded together or there's space to catch water, the protective rust has a way of turning into regular old destructive rust. Atlanta's Omni Coliseum, which opened in October 1972, had a weathering steel frame. The structure never stopped rusting, the elements bored holes in the roof, and the city had to replace the building with Philips Arena 25 years later.
Things were even worse at the New Haven Coliseum, which opened in September 1972. I got to see it from the inside in 2001, because my youth hockey team was practicing there. That's how bad it had gotten. Within a little more than a decade of its opening, the steel in the parking garage had rusted to the extent that the concrete it supported would crumble and fall on the street below. The rusty runoff also stained the glowing logos on the building's front, the ones you could see from Route 34.
By 2002, the building—which had once hosted AHL teams, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Queen, Van Halen, WWE, and scores of other superlative guests—was closed.
...There are troubled non-arenas too. Pittsburgh's U.S. Steel Tower, which opened in 1970, was built to showcase the stuff. It turned all the surrounding sidewalks (and a few neighboring structures) brown. The company tried power-washing the stuff off, but they couldn't make it all go away. A large, complicated public sculpture from 1967 was crumbling by 1991.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, AY down the memory hole: emergency upgrade on Barclays Center facade treated in Times as "more traditional materials were rejected"
The New York Times reported, in Constructing a Facade Both Rugged and Rusty:
For the facade of the Barclays Center, more traditional materials were rejected in favor of 12,000 separate pieces of what is called “weathering steel,” and that leathery brown hue, which is the arena’s final finish, is not paint but an intended layer of rust.
It was a little more complicated than that. After Forest City Ratner dropped Frank Gehry's design to save money, it essentially plunked the Conseco Fieldhouse from Indianapolis, designed by veteran arena architects Ellerbe Becket, into Brooklyn.
Posted by eric at August 28, 2012 9:01 AM