There is no shortage of metaphors to describe Minneapolis’ new, otherworldly U.S. Bank Stadium, which will have its star turn next week when the city hosts the Super Bowl.
Locals have dubbed the year-old stadium “The Sandcrawler” after the mobile fortresses that rumble across the Tatooine deserts in the Star Wars films. To Minnesota’s ethnic Scandinavians, its enormous jutting prow suggests the Viking ships their ancestors sailed across Earth’s oceans. Architecture buffs see echoes of California’s Crystal Cathedral embedded in its shimmering, faceted, glass walls.
As for the designers at HKS Architects, they modestly claim the roof’s sharp angles are just a way of managing the Twin City’s prodigious snowfall (some 45 inches a year on average), a strategy they borrowed from the A-frame lake cabins that dot the Minnesota landscape.