Analysis | Olympics | Olympic Stadium
LEFT: The triangulated ring beam uses standard steel gas pipe to good effect. Here you see a trial section of the fabric ‘wrap’.
RIGHT: Exploded diagram of the stadium structure – a layer cake of components.
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five weeks in the summer of 2012. It is what happens afterwards that is important. This is why London has invested so much in the legacy mode of the Olympic Park. Even so, as I stood high up under the cable-net roof of the stadium on a sunny day, I imagined this could be a pretty bleak place to see a couple of lower-order teams play to a sparse crowd on a wet Saturday in February. You’d have trouble filling the place with your noise. The team’s first stadium designs played
with the idea of total retractability rather than demountability, a building that could mechanically expand and contract. This was, they assure me, perfectly possible, but too expensive. The fixed version as built is pretty good in summer games mode. Its muted colour scheme of white and black extends to the seating and the tensioned vertical fabric bands of the ‘wrap’ that serves partly to conceal the precast underside of the stadium. Personally I like the functional quality of this and feel the ‘wrap’ is visually unnecessary, although it may serve to deflect winds somewhat. Colour intrudes in the terracotta colour of the rubberised track surface, the green of
RIBA JOURNAL : SEPTEMBER 2011
‘ Perhaps the best tribute to the 2012 Olympic Stadium is the way its sparse, reticent structure looks all the better next to the horribly over-engineered ArcelorMittal Orbit’
the surprisingly small grassed area, and in polycarbonate balustrade glazing, in a scheme devised by artist Sophie Smallhorn. The triangular sports lighting towers,
perched on the band of tensioned cables running round the edge of the roof, are superbly delicate. And some of the best spaces architecturally happen outside the bowl: the team has contrived some fine intermediate areas with views up b etween levels, as well as all the necessary function rooms, officials quarters, athletes’ warm-up area and so forth. Perhaps the best tribute to the 2012
Olympic Stadium is the way its sparse, reticent structure looks all the better next to the ArcelorMittal Orbit – which appears horribly over-engineered in contrast as it ties itself into meaningless knots of steel. This sculpture/viewing tower, designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor with structural engineer Cecil Balmond, with architectural input from Kathryn Findlay, is, to my eyes and those of many others, an offence. Will we learn to love it? So long as the stadium stands there in mute reproach, I would like to think not. n