Studio-MLA Debuts Landscape Architecture, Urban Realm for New SoFi Stadium at Hollywood Park

Innovator in urbanism, landscape architecture and planning completes its third major stadium park design in Los Angeles with innovative water recycling and indoor-outdoor experiences

LOS ANGELES — The internationally recognized landscape architecture and urban design practice Studio-MLA has completed the landscape design for SoFi Stadium, the Super Bowl LVI venue and the first phase of a 300-acre sports and entertainment district called Hollywood Park. The development’s centerpiece and the new home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, SoFi Stadium is wrapped by a series of engaging plazas and opens spaces including Lake Park, a signature 12-acre green public space with a new, 6-acre lake for water retention and recycling.

Developers Kroenke Sports & Entertainment and Wilson Meany took a progressive approach to the expansive sports and entertainment destination by creating public open space through private development. The open area design — reflecting Studio-MLA’s integration of landscape architecture, urban design, and planning — allows this large-scale work to reinvest in the community of Inglewood, Calif., and provide connections into the existing urban fabric. According to Denver-based Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, “This is the largest mixed-use development under construction in the Western United States, with more than 25 acres of public parks and open space,” adding that is open year ‘round and accessible by all, creating a truly democratic experience.

Hailed as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times, the project is designed as a true community amenity while incorporating significant green infrastructure and stormwater management strategies. The first indoor-outdoor NFL stadium to be constructed for the NFL, SoFi Stadium is the site of Super Bowl LVI on Sunday, February 13. Last year, the stadium park was included in an exhibit by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, honoring Studio-MLA’s receiving the 2021 National Design Award in Landscape Architecture.

Designed within a public gathering space for Inglewood, greater Los Angeles, and visitors from around the world, the SoFi Stadium project is the centerpiece of the privately funded destination that will eventually offer up to 5 million square feet of new buildings for offices, a retail district, a hotel, and up to 3,000 new residences. Stitching it all together are the magnetic parks and plazas that connect city districts to a valuable shared amenity.

“It’s all about how a stadium becomes part of a landscape and the landscape becomes part of the stadium,” says Mia Lehrer, FASLA, president of Studio-MLA, which has also recently reimagined the 260-acre landscape at Dodger Stadium and the new Banc of California Stadium, home to Los Angeles Football Club. “With a pioneering project team, we’re honored to help imagine this extensive park and public district alongside the people of Inglewood, validating how sports stadiums inherently democratize space and bring people together.”

SoFi Stadium’s design by architect HKS in collaboration with Studio-MLA and a team of leading engineers and consultants has been hailed as the first football stadium built in Los Angeles in nearly a century and the largest for the NFL. “The state-of-the-art venue includes many firsts across industries, including in architecture, construction, engineering, technology and more,” states SoFi Stadium: It is the football league’s first open-air, indoor-outdoor venue and among the first sports venues with a showcase lake that serves as a community amenity and captures and repurposes stormwater to serve the site’s irrigation water needs. The water feature also honors the memory of historic lakes previously at the racetrack, acknowledging the community’s desire to recall and reinvent those original bodies of water.