I often describe the buildings we design as “cathedrals for memories.” Why? While architects design venues, what happens around and inside them is what makes those places matter. The gathering. The connection. The energy. Yet some of the most consequential design decisions aren’t about the building itself. They’re connecting the venue to a transit station and an existing district, shaping the landscape to invite people in and giving visitors a reason to return even when there is no ticket to buy. These decisions can determine whether a venue functions as an isolated destination for events or becomes part of the life of the city.
A venue’s experience begins on the approach, when the building comes into view for the first time. It continues in the plaza where friends gather before a game or concert, along the street where a restaurant fills with people who don’t hold a ticket and in the surrounding district long after the event ends. These moments were once considered peripheral to architecture. Today, they are fundamental to its success. Today, they drive our design.
For much of architecture’s modern history, venues were designed around what happened inside them. The venue’s primary function drove the plan. The seating bowl, exhibition floor, stage or departure gate was the center of gravity. Arrival, circulation, hospitality and the surrounding public realm supported that central purpose.
When that was the goal, the result was often buildings that could perform their intended functions remarkably well, but were often switched on for an event and switched off when it ended. The next challenge is to design places that work beyond their primary function, and to understand what makes people want to gather, stay, return and participate.
The experience begins before the event
A modern venue is no longer judged only by what it contains. It is judged by the experience it creates from the first point of contact to the last. That experience begins before arrival. How does someone reach the venue? What signals that they are approaching something meaningful? Is the entrance intuitive? For a visiting fan, does it begin at the airport? Does the surrounding environment build anticipation or simply create distance between the street and the door?
Once inside, the questions become more granular. Can people understand where they are and where they want to go? Does circulation encourage exploration or just move people between entrances and concession stands? Are there places to pause, connect and take in the atmosphere or even take a picture to capture the moment?
These are not just aesthetic considerations. Wayfinding, sightlines, acoustics, lighting, landscape and crowd movement all shape how people experience a place, from how they move, how long they stay and whether they feel that a place was made with them in mind. A plaza can make arrival feel ceremonial or stressful. A concourse can invite exploration or make people feel processed. A façade can communicate openness or reinforce separation. A design that looks compelling in a rendering may still fail if it creates bottlenecks, confusing routes or uncomfortable places to wait. The goal is to make the entire experience feel coherent, intuitive and worth returning to.
The venue, its landscape, its infrastructure and its surrounding district must be understood as a continuous environment. The event may provide the reason to come, but the complete experience determines what people take away from it, and whether they want to return.
The edge now matters as much as the center
Traditional venue planning concentrates attention at the center: the field, stage, exhibition hall, gallery or gate. Ecosystem thinking gives equal weight to the edges. The edge is where the venue meets the city. It is also where much of its long-term economic and civic value is created.
TQL Stadium’s exterior in Cincinnati is more than the stadium’s front door. It’s an immersive edge that helps connect the stadium with the Over-the-Rhine and the West End neighborhoods. Its dynamic LED-integrated façade yields two key outcomes: a fan-focused entry sequence unlike any other in Major League Soccer, and a community that’s a focal point of daily life rather than an area active only on match days. That does not make the design challenge as simple as adding more shops, restaurants or technologically advanced displays. A grouping of amenities is not an ecosystem. The value comes from how those elements relate to one another and the city around them.
Circulation can reveal views, establish orientation and create moments of discovery. Thresholds can become places to gather rather than lines to cross. Landscapes can manage climate, support movement and improve comfort while creating a recognizable public identity. The ground floor can either contribute to the life of the street or turn its back on it. The spaces between buildings matter just as much as the buildings themselves.
A convention center can activate its perimeter rather than present a blank wall to the city. A museum can make gardens and public programming part of its daily presence rather than experiences available only after admission. A sports venue can connect to parks, workplaces, homes and restaurants that remain useful when the seating bowl is empty. A great venue should not need an event to justify its existence. It should be the anchor of an experiential district.
The principles apply beyond sports. Airports are becoming compressed versions of cities, incorporating local food, public art, hospitality, workspaces and cultural identity. Museums and performing arts centers are opening their boundaries through plazas, gardens and free programming. Convention centers and civic spaces accommodate markets, art fairs, festivals and everyday public use alongside scheduled events. The common thread is understanding that a venue’s success depends, in part, on what happens beyond its primary attraction.
Sports districts make the evolution especially visible because of their scale. At Kai Tak Sports Park in Hong Kong, the development combines major event venues with approximately 34 acres of landscaped open space, retail and dining. Its larger value comes not simply from placing multiple uses on one site, but from designing the connections among them to support major events, community recreation and everyday urban life. I saw it firsthand: no game and still a crowd big enough that you’d have assumed there was one.
The defining question across all these building types is increasingly the same: What happens here when the main attraction is not operating? The answer tells you whether you’ve built a venue or a destination.
An ecosystem must be designed as one
An ecosystem must be conceived, designed and operated as a connected whole. That requires decisions about programming, mobility, security, technology and public space management much earlier in the process. Architects, landscape architects, real estate strategists, urban designers, operators, developers and civic leaders must share an understanding of how the place should function on event days, on ordinary days and years after opening.
The strongest ecosystems also offer different ways to participate. A district built entirely around premium hospitality may produce revenue, but it will struggle to become a genuine piece of the city. A public space is not truly public if it is uncomfortable, inaccessible or effectively closed whenever a ticketed event takes place.
Those outcomes matter even more when public investment or public land is involved. A venue’s value cannot be measured only through attendance projections and event-day spending. It should also be measured through non-event day activity, repeat visitation, transit use, local business impact and the number of people who use the place without buying a ticket. A building can be full for three hours and still fail its city.
The experience economy has made physical presence more valuable, but it has also raised expectations. People can watch, shop, work and socialize without leaving home. When they do choose to go somewhere, they expect more than access to a primary event. They expect a sequence of experiences that makes the journey worthwhile.
The best venues no longer contain a single experience. They connect a series of experiences that are not bound by the venue itself. That is how a building becomes a destination, and how a destination becomes an integral part of a city.