It’s designed as the anti-Bird’s Nest, to be sure - or maybe the nest belonging to a frugal and supremely minimalist bird.
But there is undeniably something appealing in a frank, bare-bones way about its proportions and its honesty. Ringed by a superstructure of white triangular supports, it’s a building that looks almost unfinished - or like scaffolding for another, more ambitious piece of architecture. The main stadium is the clearest sign of that spirit of leanness. If the Beijing Olympics were about national pride - about making an announcement, with telegenic architecture, of China’s newfound global muscle - London organizers have concentrated on planning for the post-Olympic future of their site, for what they refer to as its “legacy” condition. Still, the differences in architectural tone between these games and the 2008 version would be tough to overstate. Would it be going too far to label these the Austerity Games? Maybe if that title weren’t already taken by the London Olympics of 1948, which were held in a shell-shocked city facing severe postwar shortages of all kinds. Thanks to old-fashioned British reserve and concerns about avoiding the white-elephant syndrome that has plagued many if not most host cities - and also to the sober realities of the economic moment - next year’s Olympics promise to be an exercise, more than anything, in architectural restraint. In Athens, four years before that, the view would have been of Santiago Caltrava’s white-roofed remake of a 71,000-seat stadium.īut in London, this time around, it is far more than the roster of architects that has changed. The sleek, cedar-clad form of Hopkins Architects’ velodrome peeked into view to the north.įrom a similar vantage point in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympics, I would have seen a breathtaking main stadium by Herzog and de Meuron, the so-called Bird’s Nest, in the center of a paved plaza of authoritarian scale. I also had a clear view of Wilkinson Eyre’s basketball venue, a temporary structure made of pillowy white fabric panels. The main Olympic Stadium, designed by American firm Populous in collaboration with the British architect Peter Cook, rose directly in front of me. From the edge of that building, designed by Zaha Hadid and nicknamed the “stingray,” I had a panoramic view of the Olympic Park, which covers 500 acres in a once-industrial section of the Lower Lea Valley, on the eastern edge of London. One morning about two weeks ago, having made my way from central London to the site of next summer’s Olympic Games, I stood on a wide terrace emerging from the just-completed aquatic center.