Architects are not always overly
complimentary of their fellow professionals’ work, so it perhaps says much for
Zaha Hadid’s Olympics Aquatic Centre (above) that it has almost without exception
impressed the men and women of her profession.
British architect Amanda Levet, a winner of
the UK’s prestigious RIBA Stirling prize, is but one example. ‘Without
question, the Aquatics Centre is the star building,’ she says. ‘It is a
spectacular expression of its sport, resolved in its form and beautifully
detailed.’
With its undulating roof reminiscent of a
wave and sinuous, aquatic lines, Hadid’s creation is one of the most memorable
sights of the Olympic Park that has been created in east London to host the
games of the XXX Olympiad.
The site has risen out of an inauspicious
area of dereliction in a deprived area of London that was formerly home to
decaying industrial units and World War II bombsites. Indeed, construction work
was delayed on several occasions as unexploded bombs were removed.
That’s hard to believe today, though, when
you walk among the stadia across an Olympic Park that brings nature back to an
area where wild creatures once feared to tread. Indeed, landscaping the Olympic
park alone cost £18 million – though that is a drop in the ocean set against
the £9.3 billion the games are said to be costing the UK’s government.
Whether that money has been well spent will
be a subject for debate for years, perhaps, but one thing is for certain and
that is the Olympics have brought with them the most significant public
building project since the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising
Committee of the Olympic Games and himself an Olympic gold medalist in 1980 and
1984, is predictably excited by the transformation.
He says: ‘If I think back eight years, I'm
standing at the top of a tower block looking at the site with the International
Olympic Committee’s evaluation teams, feeling a bit like a Costa Brava
timeshare salesman, saying: “You see that rotting pile of fridges, that's where
the stadium is going, and that's where the velodrome is going.”
‘And I'm hearing the words coming out and
they are looking at me, thinking “Yeah?” We've come a long way.
‘I don't think people quite realise, unless
you have been here, just what has happened. I still get occasionally shaken by
what I see.’
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| The Velodrome: inspired by a bicycle |
In addition to Hadid’s £269m Aquatics
Centre there are several other buildings that should impress any visitor.
Perhaps the best of these is the Velodrome, by Hopkins Architects.
Wooden-clad and with a roof that replicates
the shape of a bicycle wheel or a bike track – or a Pringle crisp, according to
some, more iconoclastic, commentators. It cost £95m to build and its track
contains 56 kilometres of Siberian pine and 350,000 nails.
It has also received the approval of no
less a figure than quadruple Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy – a
household name in the UK – who likes the way the audience is accommodated
inside. ‘Having seating all the way around gives it the feel of a bowl, as if
everyone is focused on the track,’ he said. Then again, he should be
enthusiastic – he was consulted about its design.
Alongside the Velodrome and Aquatics
Centre, several other structures will endure post-Olympics to become part of
the London skyline.
The largest of these is the Olympic Stadium
itself, costing £486m and the creation of architectural firm Populous.
Functional, dramatic and capable of seating 80,000, it will be the principal
venue for the track and field events.
Much of the debate surrounding the stadium
concerns what will happen to it once the games are over. Several football clubs
have expressed an interest, with West Ham United, newly promoted to the
Premiership for the 2012-13, season the front-runners to take up residence.
London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, said in May:
‘I still think it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be a footballing
solution and that would be a good thing, but it is not in my view absolutely
essential. I can envisage all sorts of other legacy solutions for the stadium.
‘If you look at the fate of stadia around
the world, look at Beijing and Athens, they are the most difficult things to
make sure you get a serious legacy proposition for.
‘This is a difficult process. This is a
major piece of public infrastructure with big state aid implications that we
are trying to transfer to commercial concerns and that is always going to evoke
very complicated legal problems.’
A more certain fait awaits the £22.7m
ArcelorMittal Orbit, the Anish Kapoor-designed tower that will endure as a
piece of public art.
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| The Orbit: like a vast helter-skelter |
The Orbit has proved controversial. Its
detractors question its purpose and its appearance and, indeed, it does look a
bit like an enormous, red helter-skelter.
Johnson, who was a driving force behind the
creation, is of course, enthused. ‘It would have boggled the minds of the
Romans,’ the classically educated mayor declaimed. ‘It would have dwarfed the
aspirations of Gustave Eiffel, and it will certainly be worthy of the best show
on Earth, in the greatest city on Earth.’
Supposedly, the idea for the Orbit came to
fruition after a chance meeting between Johnson and the Indian steel magnate
Lakshmi Mital at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009. The former pitched
the latter about the idea of a lasting legacy of the games and funds – £17m of
them – were duly forthcoming.
Kapoor and the engineer Cecil Balmond, who
collaborated on the project, say they took as their inspiration aspects of the
Eiffel Tower, Tatlin’s Tower – designed for post revolutionary St Petersburg
(Leningrad) but never built – and 16th-century artist Pieter Brueghel’s vision
of the Tower of Babel.
Detractors may argue that the latter is
rather apt – the creation being a confused jumble of ideas. Kapoor has his own
thoughts. ‘We didn't want an icon, we wanted a kind of moving narrative. You
start under this great domed canopy that sits above you, almost ominous
darkness, sucking you in. Then you come up slowly to light.
‘At the top, there is a room with two very
large concave mirrors, bringing the sky in, as if you are in the lens room of a
telescope. There are moments, walking round, when it looks a jumbled mess, and
then at certain points you might see little harmonies and clarity. That is the
kind of thing we wanted, not something that gave itself away all at once.’
Love it or loathe it, the Orbit will be a
talking point of the 2012 London Olympics – and one that endures long after the
last medal has been awarded.
The facts
While the Olympics are London’s biggest
attraction this summer, the city has plenty to satisfy those looking for a
cultural distraction.
The Horse: from Arabia to Royal Ascot
The British Museum
Produced under the patronage of Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II the show traces 5,000 years of man’s relationship with the
horse and the animal’s role in the creation of civilisations.
The Temporary Pavilion at the Serpentine
Gallery
Every year the Serpentine Gallery
commissions a major architect to create a temporary pavilion. This year it is
the turn of Swiss architectural duo Herzog & de Meuron and Chinese artist
Ai Wei Wei.
World Shakespeare Festival 2012
The works of Shakespeare are being staged
at a wide range of venues across the UK during the summer, including the Swan
Theatre in Stratford and the Globe in London.
River of Music
Between 21 and 22 July the River of Music
will bring together musicians from all the Olympic and Paralympic nations who
will perform at landmark sites along the River Thames in London.
Damian Hirst at Tate Britain
Hirst may not be to everybody’s taste, but
it’s hard to deny either the impact he has had or his marketing ability. This
summer Tate Modern is hosting its first major exhibition of Hirst’s work
This
article originally appeared in Imperial magazine.
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