Built to Gather: How Kansas City Became the Sports Architecture Capital of the World

The Architecture of Gathering

Saturday, October 24 | The Social Middle

Saturday’s Social Middle theme is about the spaces where people gather, and few people understand the architecture of gathering quite like Tom Waggoner, AIA. For more than 50 years, Kansas City has quietly built an extraordinary distinction: it has the highest concentration of sports architects anywhere in the world. Waggoner has spent nearly four decades helping write that story from the inside.

His career traces the arc of an industry that took root right here. Waggoner joined Ellerbe Becket’s Kansas City office in 1988, worked on the renovation of Madison Square Garden, and led the design of an expansion to Notre Dame Stadium before spending more than three decades focused entirely on collegiate athletic facilities. Along the way, he co-founded Bredar Waggoner Architects, helped launch 360 Architecture in 2004, and guided that firm through its acquisition by HOK. But Waggoner’s story is also the story of something much larger.

Today, 20 Kansas City firms are designing sports facilities across the United States and around the world, all led by architects with ties back to four major Kansas City firms: HNTB; Populous, formerly HOK Sport; AECOM, formerly Ellerbe Becket; and HOK Kansas City, formerly 360 Architecture. Together, those firms represent generations of talent, mentorship, competition, collaboration, and expertise that have made Kansas City an unlikely global center for sports architecture.

In his talk, Waggoner will trace the origins of this remarkable 50-plus-year story: how sports facility design emerged as a specialized practice in Kansas City, how talent moved between firms and created new ones, and how that concentration of expertise ultimately shaped stadiums and arenas worldwide.

It’s a story that feels particularly resonant within Saturday’s Social Middle. Stadiums are enormous feats of architecture and engineering, but ultimately their purpose is deeply human. They are places designed for tens of thousands of people to arrive, navigate, gather, participate, celebrate, and experience something together.

Kansas City’s contribution to that experience is still evolving. From CPKC Stadium, the first purpose-built venue in the world for a professional women’s soccer team, to hosting the FIFA World Cup this summer and the upcoming stadiums for the Chiefs and Royals, the city continues to ask, and answer, the same fundamental question: how do you design a place built to bring people together?

Waggoner literally wrote the book on the subject. His 2022 book, Designed in Kansas City: How Kansas City Became the Sports Architecture Capital of the World, grew from six years of research into the people, firms, and relationships behind this remarkable design legacy. A founding member of KC Global Design and longtime board member of the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission, Waggoner also chaired an AIA Kansas City task force focused on World Cup 2026.

At the 2026 SEGD Conference Experience Kansas City from October 22-24, he’ll take us inside a story hiding in plain sight: how one Midwestern city became a global center for designing some of the biggest places we gather, and where that legacy might go next.