The New York Times has run a fascinating thought experiment in rendered form: What would it look like if the winter Olympics were held in New York City? From luges through Times Square to ski jumps over Bryant park, the ideas are certainly fantastical - but also fun lessons in scale. See them all here.
The 2014 Winter Olympics has commenced in Sochi within the shell of Populous’ Fabergé egg-inspired stadium. Built solely to host the opening and closing ceremonies, the Fisht Olympic Stadium's translucent polycarbonate roof bears a slight resemblance to the nearby, snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. Once the Games are complete, the stadium’s 40,000-seat capacity will be expanded to accommodate the 2018 FIFA World Cup, before retiring as a scaled-down, 25,000-seat home venue for the local football team.
Populous’ stadium is just one of eleven purpose-built venues within the “Coastal Cluster” Olympic park. Check out a few others that caught our eye, after the break...
This four part series (originally published on Aggregate’s website) examines The Gherkin, the London office tower designed by Foster + Partners, showing how the urban icon engaged and leveraged perceptions of risk. In part one, author Jonathan Massey introduced the concept of "risk design” to describe how the Gherkin’s design managed the risks posed by climate change, terrorism, and globalization. In part two, below, Massey examines the Gherkin’s enclosure and ventilation systems in detail to explain how the building negotiated climate risk.
In a poster promoting London’s bid to host the Olympic Games, the Gherkin supported gymnast Ben Brown as he vaulted over the building’s conical peak. The image associated British athleticism and architecture as complementary manifestations of daring and skill, enlisting the Gherkin as evidence that London possessed the expertise and panache to handle the risk involved in hosting an Olympic Games.
But a poster created three years later offered a very different image. Created by activists from the Camp for Climate Action to publicize a mass protest at Heathrow Airport against the environmental degradation caused by air travel, this poster shows the Gherkin affording only precarious footing to a giant polar bear that swats at passing jets as its claws grasp at the slight relief offered by spiraling mullions and fins.
London-based studio Weston Williamson has been announced the winner of the Brasilia Athletics Stadium competition. The international competition, associated with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, called for designers to envision a 70,000 seat stadium in the nation's capital.
After a government report earlier this month found that the London Olympics had brought a £10-billion-boost to the UK's economy - effectively breaking even with the initial investment after just one year - the architectural community has begun to question whether the built legacy of the games will be worthwhile in the long run.
Guardian critic Olly Wainwright is scathing about the Olympic park, particularly the developments at the edge of the site: "At every junction of this roaring A-road sprouts a steroidal tower, each clad in ever more lurid colours, transforming the street into a gauntlet of competing ambitions. Looming over adjacent council estates, these brash totems are a monument to Olympian greed... Strip away all the festive colours, though, and you'll find that these are actually mean-minded silos of tightly packed one-bedroom flats, mostly sold overseas for buy-to-let."
Find out more about Wainwright's investigations, and other opinions of the Olympic legacy, after the break.
In "How (Not) to Host the Olympics," I suggest that, when it comes to Olympic Planning, there is one Golden Rule: “The best thing to do if you’re bidding for the Olympics, Is to Not Get the Olympics.”
However, a recent article from The Atlantic Cities' Emily Badger takes that claim to question.
Badger follows up in Chicago, a city that bid - hard - for the 2016 Olympics (which will take place in Rio de Janeiro). As she puts it: "We often ask what Olympic cities really get in return for all the money, energy, and construction chaos invested in hosting the world's largest sporting event. But the story of cities that vie for but never win the Games raises a different question.
'What does putting together a bid that is unsuccessful leave you?'"
Although the 2012 London Olympics concluded last August, RIBA president Angela Brady and New London Architecture chairman Peter Murray continued to lead a fierce campaign against the strict International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules that forbid architectural practices who contributed to the design and construction of the venues from promoting their work. Months later, a compromise has finally been met and the architects will now allowed to discuss their contributions freely.
Brady said: “The majority of architects and designers we were standing up for in the campaign were young small businesses who just wanted to be able to promote their work. It’s great that they are now able to speak freely about their contribution.”
The London 2012 Olympics start today, and once again architecture is on the spotlight. With a big focus on reusable and adaptable structures, the lineup includes renowned architecture firms such as Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Hopkins Architects, Populous and Zaha Hadid Architects.
On this infographic we introduce you the iconic buildings of the Olympics since 776 B.C. until today! Follow our London 2012 Olympics coverage in its dedicated page.
As we’ve discussed at length here at ArchDaily, an Olympic Bid is no thing to take on lightly. Our 3-part series on the subject, “How NOT To Host the Olympics,” made very clear that this mega-event is a major urban project with long-term economic, social, and environmental consequences. So, it’s no surprise that Olympic bidders research and strategize well in advance – consider London 2012‘s “Sustainable Olympics” bid or OMA’s perhaps premature interest in Turkey- to ensure, first, that they get the bid and, second, that the Games leave renewal (rather than destruction) in their wake. Architecture, Research, and Urbanism practice, XML, are already taking on the task of preparing its home country, the Netherlands, for its 2028 bid. Their just-released report compares Olympic City bids across the globe – from the 2020 contenders of Madrid, Istanbul, Dohan, and Tokyo to a 2024 contender, South Africa. Interestingly, they’ve noted a cyclical nature of the Games’ socio-economic significance and have thus come up with a 3-prong strategy that will position the Netherlands to spearhead a new Olympic paradigm. You can check out XML’s full Report, well worth a look, after the break...
Welcome back and congratulations for having made it to the final installation of the Olympic City Guide.
So far, in parts I and II, we’ve learned how to design for your post-Games legacy (No White Elephants please) and to revitalize -not demolish- your city’s most deprived “eye-sores” (Don’t Hate, Rejuvenate).
So what’s left? Well, in this post-Recession era of austerity, a huge part of your Olympic Strategy will be justifying the spending – the colossal spending – to your more than skeptical constituents. As I said in the last post, a good starting point is targeting urban renewal and being as transparent as possible, but another big element is how you market the Games – not just to the International Olympics Committee (IOC), but to your own city-dwellers.
So how can you get them both on your side? Simple - Go Green.
UPDATE: In an e-mail to ArchDaily, a Sr. PR Manager at OMA told us that while Victor van der Chijs expressed his hopes that Turkey will host the Olympics in an interview with an Anatolia news agency earlier this month, OMA is not planning on opening an office in Turkey any time soon.
We reported earlier this week that AECOM will be designing the Olympic Park Masterplan for the 2016 Olympics that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The international competition winning entry’s concept of operation, separate access for athletes and the audience, logistics for the transport system, the viability of implementation and unique access for parking, made it stand out amongst the other submissions.
