Learn more about a type of architecture that saw increased usage at the London Olympics in 2012 and now contributes to a more circular approach to large events
The Paris Olympics 2024 aimed – and has now claimed - to be the most sustainable games ever, with an emphasis on reuse, redistribution and the use of clean energy.
Once upon a time, a new Olympic Games precipitated huge amounts of building work around a host city, which spawned shiny, new, centrepiece stadia and venues. Think the famous National Stadium (also known as the Birds Nest stadium) in Beijing, China (2008), the Olympicstadion in Munich, Germany (1972), the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo (2020) and Stadium Australia (2000) for a selection of recognisable structures built specifically for the sporting event to end all sporting events.
An Olympic Games became synonymous with a new ‘hero’ stadium.
However, this time only one permanent sporting venue was built specifically for Paris 2024 – the Olympic Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis - with all other venues using existing facilities or temporary and largely demountable structures. For example, the Stade de France, built for the 1998 football World Cup, was co-opted as the main venue, and for the grand opening ceremony the city turned to its very oldest (natural) facility, the Seine.
It’s the use of temporary structures that has really helped in the reuse of existing venues, a shift that took hold at London 2012. The Olympic Games might come around every four years for athletes, but it also signifies a cycle for the events design community, who use overlay architecture to dramatically transform existing venues for a few weeks of intense usage.
Is the ‘heroic’ Olympic stadium a thing of the past?
Kevin Owens, founder of wooarchitects, which has designed no less than nine venues for Paris 2024, says London definitely marked the shift towards doing more with fewer permanent venues.
The days of heroic Olympic venues have past, he argues. London did get a new stadium, but it was a fraction of the size of Beijing’s Birds Nest, the scale of which he thinks we will not see again. London’s enduring legacy to the Games was arguably its demonstration of how much can be done with a demountable arena.
‘The challenge for Olympics delivery authorities has become to make sure we can make the games fit the legacy proposals, rather than the other way around,’ he explains.
‘For us as designers, the dialogue becomes more about not just delivering a built solution that meets the International Olympic Committee requirements, but also to find a smarter way to do it. It’s very easy to build overblown facilities that will never get used at the same level again.’
Wooarchitects was created in 2014 by the team that led the design of London 2012 for the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). As head of the LOCOG’s design team, Kevin found himself acting both as client for the likes of Zaha Hadid (Aquatics Centre), Hopkins (Velodrome) and Wilkinson Eyre (Basketball Arena) and as lead designer for the many temporary and overlay venues.
When it came to Paris, the city’s organising committee stipulated that it was building an aquatics centre, but it wanted to be left with a relatively compact permanent facility. London had the same problem, solved by Hadid’s structure having two large removable wings, but this inevitably compromised the design.
So, woo looked at the existing Paris La Défense Arena, a rugby stadium, raised the field of play by 2.5m and sank two Olympic pools into it, the competition pool and a warm up pool. Three sides of the stadium are being used for seating while the fourth houses all the technical facilities – the pool timing, scoreboards, broadcast camera platforms and so on.
This meant Paris no longer had to build an overblown 15,000-seat aquatics venue. Instead it got its sensibly-sized, purpose-built centre, which it used only for water polo, artistic swimming and diving competitions.
The climbing venue in Le Bourget, also designed by woo, will leave behind a legacy park with a permanent climbing wall and warm-up facility for a new school that is being built. But otherwise the 6,000-seat Olympic venue is temporary and demountable.
‘We adopted almost a rock and roll approach to the delivery of the climbing centre,’ Owens says. ‘We created the kind of venue you might expect to find at a music festival, except that people need the sort of facilities you would find at Wimbledon or Wembley, not a muddy field.’
It’s a reminder that many of the technologies employed by the overlay architect for demountable staging and temporary audience accommodation have their roots in large-scale music events. Kevin says that while the climbing venue is a bespoke design, the structures are built entirely with rock and roll rigging. There are huge stores of this stuff available if you know where to find them.
Read more about the Paris 2024 Aquatics Centre and how it works for everything
How can architects use the principles of overlay design?
Woo has worked on 17 major sporting events, including rugby, football and cricket World Cups, and is about to head off to Los Angeles to see how it can contribute to the 2028 Olympics. Further down the line, woo is already thinking about the Brisbane Olympics in 2032.
For the vast majority of architects, however, being involved in an event as high-profile and complex as an Olympic Games is highly unlikely. But, as Owens suggests, the key principles of overlay design can be fed down to most projects, providing the architect with notable advantages.
One of the great things about overlay architecture is that it provides the opportunity to push design solutions way beyond normal boundaries, he says. The usual rules do not apply. How else would you get to build a beach volleyball arena on Horse Guards Parade?
‘Temporary buildings and temporary solutions allow you to test without major commitment,’ he suggests. ‘We try to encourage this approach with developers because temporary solutions can bring things forward earlier. We’re doing some small-scale work with the Earls Court Development Corporation, and what we’re finding is that by using overlay design we’re able to open up sites earlier. You can put something in place for three or four years. It could be phase five of your development, but rather than being fallow for 15 years the site is being used straight away and creating revenue.’
Owens uses the Rugby World Cup of 2015 as another example of how overlay design can be used to test things out. A reimagining of the stadium by woo, which included some temporary structures (that helped to extend concourses and open up car parks to improve the flow of people), were adopted as permanent structures after the tournament.
It’s proof that overlay design can provide much more than temporary solutions.
Thanks to Kevin Owens, founder, wooarchitects.
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