New stadium

OK, now the new stadium design has been published. I've waited a couple of days to see what the others say. First my comments:

After all this time, the final design for the main Olympic stadium is that submitted by - wait for it - an Australian architect. It's not as if we don't have brilliant architects in the UK - their work has been exported throughout the world. The stunning Milau viaduct in France was designed by a British architect (Norman Foster); people travel there just to see the highest and longest cable suspension bridge in the world which leaps across the valley of the River Tarn. And what about the amazing work of the Heatherwick Studio (http://www.heatherwick.com)?Not only that but the price tag of £496 million is a massive increase on the originally projected £280 million - though, to be fair, the increase in cost is not (as yet!) as much as the increase in the overall cost of the Games. And there yet has to be a decision as to the use of the stadium when the Games finish - no doubt all will be revelaed in due course. However, just read what the UK papers say about the costs and the design:

The Daily Telegraph
The final cost for the main London 2012 Olympic Stadium could be higher than the £496 million price tag revealed last month, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

Olympic Delivery Authority chairman John Armitt told members of the London Assembly on Oct 10 that they had agreed the figure with main contractors Robert McAlpine for the 80,000-seater stadium, the designs for which will be unveiled today.

But it is understood that the figure Armitt gave to the London Assembly was a forecast and is only 80 per cent certain of being the final cost for the stadium. The final bill will only be known once the work is complete a year before the London Games open.

A spokesman for the ODA said, however: "We are confident about the stadium budget announced. It contains provision for inflation, VAT and conversion down to legacy."
The fresh uncertainty over the cost of the stadium, which was originally priced at £280 million in London's bid document in 2005, comes as organisers prepare to show off for the first time plans for the innovative arena, which will provide the centrepiece for London's Olympics.
To create a long-term athletics legacy, builders will dig down to create a permanent 25,000-seater track-and-field arena which will remain after the Games have finished.

Temporary seating will then be erected on a platform around the perimeter of the main bowl to boost the capacity to 80,000 during the month of Olympic and Paralympic competition. The scaffolding will be covered by a 'wrap' of Olympic images.

After the Games, organisers hope to attract League One football team Leyton Orient to become the main anchor tenant and they have not yet given up hope of a Premiership rugby union club such as Saracens joining them.

Yesterday, the ODA's chief executive David Higgins confirmed work on the stadium would start three months early, in May 2008.

He said: "The quicker we start, the more time we have to ensure completion in an effective time to allow the test events to happen in 2011."

The Times on line:

It’s a bowl of blancmange was my first reaction when the latest designs for the 2012 Olympic stadium flashed up on the screen. The utter silence all around suggested that the audience was equally bemused.

The expressive, ballooning shapes of the early design have gone, replaced by a pixilated outer wall which will look exactly the same from every viewpoint, making it even more disorienting to walk round than the Millennium Dome.

What the architect Rod Sheard refers to as the stadium’s crown has all the interest of an elevated railway track. Where, oh where, is the sinuous swooping silhouette that wowed the world in Athens and will do so again in Beijing. There the engineers created sensationally athletic and muscular shapes that perfectly express and celebrate the greatest sporting event on earth.
Here the motive force behind the whole design is fear. Fear of adventure, fear of overspend and fear of leaving behind a white elephant. At the presentation the word legacy featured far more than the word sport. The main point of the brief was to ensure that an 80,000-seat stadium for the Olympics could be reduced to a 25,000-seater for community use and the occasional elite event.

Will Olympic stadium look worth £496m? Little thought has been given to the features that bring magic to the Olympics. When, with Athens in mind, I asked how the torch would be brought into the stadium I was greeted with a bemused smile and told this was a matter for the opening ceremony. But in Athens the drama of the torch descending into the stadium was a sensation, precisely because the staircase was the main focal point of the design. Here no opportunity has been taken to create memorable entrances and ascents.

True, practical elements appear to have been properly considered. There is a roof protecting two thirds of the spectators from rain but a large enough space for the centre to be filled with sunlight all day. There is shelter from the fierce winds that bedevil the Thames Estuary ensuring that the opportunity to break records will not be lost.

But the windswept area around the stadium in Stratford, East London, at present without any hint of cover, could be bitter and the hospitality pods look no more than coloured pebbles washed up from the beach. Tree planting is urgently needed for both shade and shelter.
One feature which needs a complete rethink is the stadium lighting, shown as 14 banks of rectangular lights like those around a football pitch. Athens demonstrated how night lighting could be a dazzling and constantly changing visual display. Stratford offers no more than glare.
The core of the problem is that the Olympic Board (Lord Coe honourably excepted) seems convinced, like those who gave us the Millennium Dome, that if they say the words “world-class building” often enough we will believe it and it will happen.

Ken Livingstone proclaimed: “This will be the best stadium ever constructed anywhere on the planet.” Forgive me, Ken, but I don’t think those who have been visitors to Athens and Beijing will agree.

A great building needs a great client and this project is urgently in need of someone who demands architecture and engineering with flair and character, and who is not dazzled by every latest computer image. The pixilated walls, it was pointed out, could show the patterns of the flags of every competing nation and shadowy images of famous photographs of great athletes in the past. Big deal. Or the stadium could be covered in fabric, which could be cut up and sold as bags after the Games. Don’t most people make their souvenirs before the event?

A flat-topped coloured glass bowl, surrounded by a web of steel knitting needles just will not do. The basics are there but the engineers, Buro Happold, who are among the best in the world, need to be told to produce a structure that has muscle and athleticism to it and doesn’t look the same from every angle, and looks a great deal more interesting by both day and night.