Octorad
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Octorad is a term coined to describe a style of stadium architecture in the late 1960s. The term suggests eight radiuses, the design incorporating four arcs of a large circle to comprise most of the structure, and four arcs of a smaller circle to round out the corners. It was a variant on the stereotypical cookie-cutter stadium, most of which were either conventionally circular or oval, and which tended to have poor sight line angles for the spectators at baseball and football games, most of whom also sat far away from the field of play.
The most prominent examples of the octorad style were Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, which opened in 1967 and still exists; and Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, which opened in 1971 and has since been demolished.
Both stadiums accomplished the goal of providing better sight lines for spectators. However, the architecture of those two stadiums still put a large majority of the fans far away from the action.
Other terms sometimes used for this design were "super circle" and "square circle".
