At last year's high-stakes interview for a lead architect to shape a $1.2-billion retractable-roof stadium for the National Football League's Atlanta Falcons, 360 Architecture's Bill Johnson staged quite a show. Figuring correctly that his firm's comparative inexperience and lack of local connections put it at the bottom of the short list for the 1.8-million-sq-ft New Atlanta Stadium, he decided to do something "over the top" to win the work.
"We were the dark horse. Our best chance was to challenge the status quo," says Johnson, a senior principal with the Kansas City, Mo.-based 360, formed in a 2004 merger of CDFM and Heinlein Schrock Stearns.