Former basketball gym becomes Stanford Athletics ‘Home of Champions’

The Arrillaga Family Sports Center has recently been repurposed to become an 18,000-sf “Home of Champions” for Stanford Athletics. The new building showcases all 126 years of Stanford student athletes and their achievements through interactive design elements.

Designed by Nashville-based experiential design firm Advent, the Home of Champions features a set of 10 custom books that list every athlete who has competed for Stanford in the past 126 years, a total of 14,998 names. When a visitor takes one of these books and places it on the nearby interactive tabletop, an RFID chip embedded in the book’s cover activates the digital display. Names from within that book begin to float on the table’s surface and visitor’s can scroll through each name to gain more information, images, and, if relevant, social media posts.

An RFID-chipped book on one of the digital tables Photo courtesy of Advent.

Other displays focus on the university’s most recent national championship teams and on the football and women’s basketball programs. Updatable feature displays highlight recent landmark events, such as women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer’s 1,000^th career victory.

An entire display has been set aside to honor the history of women in athletics at Stanford. The display provides information stretching from the 1896 basketball team and Eunice Kennedy Shriver through Olympic medalists Julie Foudy and Brenda Villa.

The Women of Stanford display at the Hall of Champions Photo courtesy of Advent.

The crown jewel of the new building is a lit display that provides a home for the Learfield Directors’ Cup, a Waterford crystal trophy awarded to the colleges and universities in the U.S. with the most success in collegiate athletics. Stanford has won the Division I version of this trophy 23 years in a row.

The Stanford Athletics Home of Champions is set to open to the public on Sept. 23.

The sports innovation entrance Photo courtesy of Advent.

People using the display tables Photo courtesy of Advent.

The championship panels Photo courtesy of Advent.

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