Multistudio's John Wilkins Jr. discusses new KU football stadium, design on K-Nation

LAWRENCE (KSNT) - Construction on KU football's new and improved David Booth Memorial Stadium, also known as the 'Gateway District,' is moving right along.

Multiple design firms, including Multistudio in downtown Lawrence and HNTB out of Kansas City, as well as Turner Construction Company, have a hand in the project. John Wilkins Jr., managing principal at Multistudio, joined K-Nation's Caroline Soro for a one-on-one interview to discuss both the design and the overall progress of the project.

Multistudio played a large role in planning and designing the exterior of KU football's future home.

"One of the things you'll notice on there is the lighting," Wilkins said. "In previous stadiums, you'd have four singular poles in the corners, and we took a distributed lighting scheme and embedded it with the structure and it emulates 'Waving of the Wheat,' which is kind of a big deal."

Wilkins says Phase I of the project, which includes remodeling the southwest, west and north sides of the stadium, is on track to be completed by August of 2025.

Despite working on other major projects in his career, like KU's DeBruce Center and Tulane football's Yulman Stadium, Wilkins, a KU graduate, called the Gateway District a 'legacy project.' However, watching the progression of his firm's work isn't the most satisfying part for Wilkins and his team.

"From a rendering to the end project is not as big of a 'wow' for us because we've visualized it, but what's incredible is watching the people interact with it," Wilkins said. "What it means to them, their reactions to it, how they embrace it, how they use it, that's always real exciting. And many times, you learn things from that too."

The conversation with Wilkins aired in Sunday's episode of K-Nation and can be watched above. K-Nation airs every Sunday night following 27 News at 10, only on KSNT.