About Pendulum

A venue should not dominate the community that pays for it, and neither should the architect who designs it. Nineteen years in ballparks and public assembly venues has taught us that most of the risk in a project never sits with the design firm, it sits with the client who lives with the operating costs, answers for the bond and the council vote, and is still explaining the attendance figures in year seven. Because the consequences are yours, we work on your side of the table.

In practice that means we will argue you out of square footage, because a venue sized for its best night will struggle on every ordinary night that follows. We would rather deliver something right-sized that a community can carry for thirty years than something impressive that quietly becomes a line item people resent, and we make that argument knowing it usually costs us, since fees tend to follow square footage. Saying so out loud is the clearest test we know of whether an architect is representing a client or representing a project.

“Jonathan and his team are both listeners and creators. They listen to what the clients’ objectives are and create ideas that fill those needs. They use these characteristics from initial design, through value engineering and on the ground during construction through opening.”

James “Chip” Moore, Executive Vice President of Florida Operations and Minor League Affiliates, Atlanta Braves

It also means the pro forma arrives at the beginning rather than the end, because seat count, concourse width, a tenant who fills the calendar in February and a revenue-producing space that earns when nothing is scheduled are architectural decisions long before they are financial ones. That discipline became S.C.O.R.E., our framework for evaluating a venue as a long-term civic system rather than a singular object, across Site Integration, Community Connection, Operational Efficiency, Revenue Innovation and Experience Design.

The proof is built and operating. Wilson Warbirds Ballpark was right-sized for year-round activity against a real public investment, CaroMont Health Park was planned to protect future development rather than consume its site, and Day Air Ballpark, Jimmy John’s Field and College Field have each done the harder thing a rendering never has to do, which is open and then work. The projects currently on the boards carry the same weight, including a new Negro Leagues Baseball Museum campus, a new Kansas City Automotive Museum, and owner’s representation on the new Tennessee Titans stadium, a role that exists specifically to protect the owner’s interest.

“So many architects spend their time telling you how innovative they are. Jonathan never says it, he just shows you.”

Josh Solomon, Owner, Hartford Yard Goats

A practice that believes its responsibility runs to the people who inherit a building eventually starts asking who inherits the profession. Pendulum invests in the future through stewardship at the youth level and at the university level, which is Jonathan O’Neil Cole’s vision for the firm. It begins in high school, where students at Manual Career & Technical Center, working with the Kansas City Automotive Museum and Kansas City Public Schools, take a 1993 Corvette from the morning it arrives to a finished piece a year later on the Art Car project, carrying the research, design development and fabrication themselves and finishing with a track record rather than a grade.

It continues through the Pendulum Prize, three annual student design awards of $2,000, one in each of our regions, at North Carolina State, Morgan State and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, judged on the clarity of an idea rather than the polish of a presentation, with no entry fee. We benefit directly from the rigor that comes out of those classrooms, so investing in them is not charity, it is advocacy pointed one generation further out.

In our nineteenth year we are getting better at synthesizing the approach and the skill. Pendulum is the thinking, Pendulum Industrial Works is the execution where details get prototyped, The Pendulum Bubble is where the two arrive together, and The Pendulum Vault is the culture that has grown around the work. None of it is empire building, because each part exists because clients needed something that did not yet exist.

Pendulum is an architecture and design studio based in Kansas City, Missouri, with offices in Greenbelt, Maryland and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. A ballpark’s impact should extend beyond the field, and so should an architect’s obligation.