ARCHITECT’S FOCUS HOPKINS ARCHITECTS
When the Olympic Velodrome opened in February on time and on budget, Sir Chris Hoy proclaimed it to be the ‘best in the world’. Mike Taylor, senior partner at Hopkins Architects, tells Magali Robathan about the challenges of designing the venue
The cycling track is made of Siberian pine and took a team of 26 carpenters eight weeks to install
How did you get involved with the Velodrome? We were selected for the design team following a com- petition in 2007. We were successful because we’re passionate about cycling and we had a strong team ethos and clear vision, which was to integrate architecture and engineering to create a building worthy of the aims of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In particu- lar we had the idea of making the inside and outside of the Velodrome very connected. Because it was going into the Olympic Park, it was important to be able to allow people in the Park to see inside the building and vice versa.
What was your brief?
Our brief was to design a UCI Category 1, 6,000-seat velo- drome for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which would remain as a 6,000 seat venue in legacy mode but also incorporate the BMX course from the Olympics and have a one mile-long road circuit and 6.5km of mountain bike tracks. We said very strongly that we were going to design it as a legacy venue and think of the Olympics as a housewarming party. The Games represent such a brief period in time that we thought it should be designed for the longer term and converted for the Games, rather than the other way around.
Can you describe the Velodrome?
One of the most noticeable things about the building is the fact that the seats have been split in two. We put half of the seats around the track; around the back of those seats we’ve created a concourse, and around that we’ve put a ring of glass, which is the connection between the inside and outside. The Park comes right up to this glass wall.
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How important was the sustainability of the building? The whole notion of sustainability was central to our think- ing. In particular, the building has a very lightweight cable-net roof structure and is very highly insulated, which helps to stabilise the temperature and keep down run- ning costs. We also included lots of skylights, to help to
ISSUE 2 2011 © cybertrek 2011
We took the other half of the seats and tucked them in the upper bowl, so the building appears to float above the glass when viewed from outside. Another key concept was that the building should emulate
a bicycle in terms of its engineering efficiency. We weren’t interested in mimicking how parts of a bike worked; we were interested in the notion of refined engineering design. We set out to make the building as light and efficient as we possi- bly could. This was important, because we were looking to design a very sustainable building, and we wanted to limit the amount of materials and enclosed volume as much as we could. The efficiency of the Velodrome was very impor- tant. We wanted the envelope of the building shrunk as tightly as possible around the spectator seating, which in turn was shrunk as tightly as possible around the track. This keeps running costs down and adds to the atmosphere.
Where did the inspiration for the design come from? Bicycles were used as inspiration for the building, both in terms of the efficiency of the structure and the design itself. We wanted the outside of the building to sculpturally
reflect the geometry and dynamism of the track itself – hence the timber clad upper bowl. It was important for the façade to give an idea of what the building was about.
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