Yudu - RIBA September 2011

Analysis | Olympics | Aquatics Centre

BELOW LEFT: For the competitors the space is going to feel like a panopticon, the whole area visible at once. This is not the case for the audience, however, some of whom will not see 7,000 other spectators.

BELOW: The boards make simultaneous reference to constructivism and Hadid’s deconstructivism.

against the curves of both the roof and the walls of the sunken pool area. Geometries crash together visually, generating the spatial drama that a more considered and measured approach might not have yielded. But beyond this it is problematic: sight lines are such that, from the upper levels, the pool can only be viewed through a slit of space between the roof profile and the bottom of the raked seating. The reduced spectator requirement for diving means the diving boards are not visible from the upper tiers. This all might, as Heverin rationalised, concentrate the eye on the actual competition, but as a result, it’s on little else. But one thing’s for sure, with all relation to the outside world severed for the duration of the games, the effect on the competitor, with 18,000 eyes on you, is going to be palpable. Externally, there’s no denying the awkward

nature of the PVC fabric-clad wings either side of the main pool roof, one of which even overhangs a waterway at one corner. If anything they serve to highlight the sophistication of the main roof, dramatically picked out against it. But there’s no doubting that they have been the dealbreaker for the lingering aerial shots of the park during the games, that one feels are going

to concentrate more on slow fly-bys of the suave, understated velodrome than something that looks like it inflated its lifebelt before it left the aircraft. The same cannot be said for the Aquatics

Centre in legacy mode, but the feeling is that the change in the nature of the building will be of biblical proportions. With the stands replaced by leaning glazed walls to the east and west of the pool, the building’s relationship to the landscape will alter fundamentally; and the timber soffit,rather lost in the glare of the high definition lighting for the event, will be cosseted in natural light. The pool, now lost in the bowels of the earth, will be cupped by the berm walls that circle it. You can imagine that swimming in the late afternoon with west light pouring in will be like some kind of cathartic experience – it may even be too much. Hadid’s Aquatics Centre in games mode,

compromised by budgetary constraints, is a flawed but human building. And its temporary wings raise issues about the very nature of spectacle itself. Is it enough for some people to hear the roar of 7,000 other spectators, but not to see them? Could their visual absence negate the dramatic value of the event? Asked the

‘ With the stands replaced in legacy mode by leaning glazed walls to the east and west of the pool, the relationship of the building to the landscape will alter fundamentally’

question, Hadid looks pensive and admits this has been a consideration, though she concedes that even she won’t be able to describe the nature of the experience until it actually occurs in 2012. But maybe it is this experience, and one’s expectations of it, that through the whole process has been unconsciously embedded in the building’s design. And which through its post-games conversion will, like Jonah, cross polarities from introspection to extroversion. Either way, in both modes, my feeling is that the Aquatics Centre will be both flawed enough and assured enough to lead us all to revelations. n