A thousand years ago, the Vikings were a nomadic people who showed no fear in crossing great oceans and lands to reach their targets. So why should our state's NFL team be tied down to one static home? Why not take advantage of the progressivism for which Minnesota is so well-known and build a new stadium with state of the art materials?

Minnesota Vikings — in a word, our advice for your facilities' future is: fabrics.

Recently, the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission announced it will replace the Minneapolis-based Metrodome with a new Teflon-coated glass fiber fabric roof. In greater conquests, the Vikings are seeking talks with Ramsey County about the Arden Hills former ammunitions plant site for a new concrete and steel stadium. But is permanent and grounded really better than a stadium that can move? We suggest that there are very good reasons for why any new stadium discussions should include the possibility of a mobile, transportable stadium made of industrial fabrics.

What exactly are these new materials? They are durable, resilient, flexible and more frequently recyclable, building materials that are used around the world and in outer space. In recent years major stadiums for the Olympics and World Cup Soccer have been constructed with fabric roofs and cladding. A few years back, industrial fabrics (as inflatable balloons) allowed the two Mars Rovers to safely land on the surface of a distant planet.

As for the Vikings, let's consider the following:

● Does anything last forever? "Permanent" buildings and designs, we are steadily realizing, may not be so permanent after all. We tend to lose interest in them as fashions change and new needs for bigger fan luxuries emerge. If sports design weren't a moving target, Minnesota's legacy of faded sports venues — Memorial Stadium, Metropolitan Stadium and the Metrodome — might have attracted preservation investments rather than calls for replacement. Like the Vikings of old, the world of professional sports is always on the move.

● Solid is not eternal. Seemingly permanent assets (think roofs) tend to collapse in winter storms (check New England for collapsed non-fabric roofs), and depending on where they are constructed (e.g., inadequately reinforced concrete towers in major seismic zones) less safe than much lighter weight structures that are inherently flexible as fabric.

● Consider the energy needed to build big buildings. In our energy-conscious era, how often do we think about the gasoline, trucks, highways, mining and processing needed to produce "permanent" building materials? And when a building is torn down, how much of them do we really recycle? The fact is that fabric buildings have much lower mass (and thus lower embodied energy) than many buildings constructed from "permanent" materials and thus require much less structural steel and concrete than heavier buildings.

● Consider the jobs. The transport, set-up, and take-down of a portable stadium would provide hundreds of Minnesota jobs that last throughout the NFL season, recurring in subsequent seasons rather than one-time jobs created for the construction of a permanent stadium.
 
By creating a flexible, transportable mobile stadium, the new Vikings stadium could travel from one county fairground or MnSCU campus to another throughout the state and thereby become truly a team of the state (and it is the entire state that will likely help to subsidize whatever is built). Fairgrounds and college sports venues are designed to handle large numbers of people and vehicles, the infrastructure already in place.

● The party can go on. Lightweight and sustainable design does not mean rustic. High-end suites for entertaining are regularly and widely created around the world at sporting and entertainment events. Some of these temporary fabric-clad set-ups are so lavish that those who participate forget that the enclosures are not permanent. The advantage is these temporary facilities do not require massive subsidies or new construction materials as they are in plentiful stock at a multitude of event companies, again reducing the overall carbon footprint.

● We have the Twins' baseball field, why not twin Vikings fields? It's estimated that a transportable Vikings stadium seating 40,000 might cost one-fifth that of a more permanent stadium, thereby allowing the Vikings to purchase two of these mobile kits so that while one was in use, the other could be setting up in the next county, thus providing that many more jobs; two crews in simultaneous employment for the season.

● Home games could be spread around the state where the largest subscribing fans are located. Ultimately, if the Vikings so desired, they could take their stadium with them so that away games could also be "home games." How many of those old-fashioned "non-mobile" stadiums ever do that?

Bruce N. Wright and Frank Edgerton Martin are long-time Minnesota residents who also write about industrial fabrics design. Wright is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine, published by the Industrial Fabrics Association International; IFAI has been Minnesota-based since 1912. Martin is a long-time writer about landscape architecture and the use of fabrics in sun-screening, erosion control, pavilions and green roofs.