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Area
3,800 graduates
9,600 guests
Award for Design Excellence
AIA Philadelphia
A stretched tensile fabric shields the stage party from the (often-simultaneous) sun and showers of late spring in St. Louis.
There is a three week window to prepare, hold the events, and decamp. The kit-of-parts frame is designed to be assembled quickly. All components are sized and shaped to efficiently truck to and from the site, to economize on labor, and to fit smartly into a remote storage facility for annual retrieval.
To resonate with the campus, the frame is designed to recall the formal loggias of the main quad.
For decades, the annual commencement ceremony has been held in the main quad. The new venue is the main athletic field, which has its own history as the site of the 1904 Summer Olympic Games.
Commencement Ceremony
Washington University in St. Louis
The main quad of the elegant collegiate gothic campus was the traditional site of the annual commencement ceremony—where faculty, administration, honored guests, and families greet the graduating students. As they reluctantly outgrew the space, the university chose their historic athletic field, the site of the 1904 Olympics, as their new venue. However, the site’s scale and lack of character posed difficulties in making the event engaging and unique, as it had been. Wishing to avoid the typical rental stages, they recognized that their new commencement had become a comprehensive design challenge—and turned to MGA Partners for an approach.