Barclays Center Peer Review

The Barclays Center, originally a Frank Gehry design, is an 18,000 seat arena that houses the New Jersey Nets basketball team. The Gehry design proposed to have an open air park with a skating rink atop the arena roof, which would have been the first of its kind. Prohibitive cost and complexity of design warranted an independent peer review to study alternative schemes. Working closely with Thornton Tomasetti, two efficient alternate schemes with considerable savings were proposed. Independent analyses were done to determine steel tonnage savings. Eventually, the Gehry design was replaced with a simpler scheme designed by Ellerbe Beckett.