Many cities in the U.S. face a structural imbalance in public resource allocation: stadiums and mega-event venues receive substantial public investment and incentives, while affordable housing remains underfunded and constrained. PLAY BALL! addresses this disparity by repurposing abandoned, underutilized sports infrastructure as long-term civic assets capable of supporting housing. Focusing on the Oakland Coliseum, the project transforms the existing stadium into a dense, mixed-use housing environment through phased redevelopment. Rather than demolition, the proposal preserves the stadium bowl as a structural armature, inserting affordable housing within its interior. Housing is carved into seating tiers and concourse layers, while the former baseball field is reimagined as a central public park that anchors the new community. As the stadium’s original program recedes, portions of the structure are opened to allow landscape and ecology to gradually occupy the Coliseum’s site, as well as it’s adjacent parking surfaces, resulting in a hybrid landscape where housing, public space, and rewilded landscape coexist as reclaimed common resources.
