Gavin Hadden

American architect Gavin Hadden was a designer of sports stadiums such as the Philadelphia Stadium, the Northwestern University Stadium, and the Cornell University Stadium. As a longtime civil employee of the Army Corps of Engineers Hadden worked on several research projects for the American Government, including the Manhattan Project during World War II. Hadden graduated from Harvard and then worked mainly in New York. He wrote several articles and papers for architecture magazines and journals.

Baker Field was the old stadium of the Columbia University in Manhattan. The field was used since 1923, and a stadium with wooden grandstands for 32,000 spectators was built by Hadden in 1928. In 1982 it was demolished to make room for a new building. The “Triarc Landing Field” is a design of an airfield developed by Hadden in order to arrange runways in different directions reducing space and material required. However, the system did not become accepted. Since the 1920s, Hadden also published a series of theoretical works on stadium design, particularly influencing the Italian architects of the time. It is possible that the two other works are parts of his writings.