When Icons CrumbleThe Troubled Legacy of Olympic Design

doi:10.1093/jdh/eps021 Journal of Design History Vol. 25 No. 3

Even Smith Wergeland

The idea of design legacy has been a vital force in Londons bid and planning for the 2012 Olympics. In this article Iengage critically with this idea by investigating the Games that are currently being framed as the polar opposite to London 2012, namely the 2004 Athens Olympics. My primary concern is to analyse the effects of Olympic design in decline, using the Athens Olympic Sports Complex (the OAKA) as the focal point of the study. Whereas legacy can apply to a range of different areas, the specific focus of this article is to study the legacy of the architectural design. Drawing on Leonardo Benevolos work on modernist architecture, Iargue that the derelict state of the OAKA venues causes a radical shift in our perception of them, visually as well as conceptually. In a post-Olympic state, the architectural design features are robbed of the context that initiated them and, as a consequence, appear to us only as vacant objects, emptied of referential meaning and bereft of their previous iconic value. This scenario, Iargue, might also become relevant in future conceptions of London 2012, which already struggles to stay true to its initial emphasis on legacy. Keywords: architectural theoryarchitectureAthens 2004derelict venuesGreece legacyLondonLondon 2012Olympic designSantiago Calatrava

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The idea of design legacy has been an important driving force in Londons preparations for the 2012 Summer Olympics. In Designing for Legacy, the 2012 London Olympic Delivery Authority (the ODA) state that We are confident that we will provide a stunning backdrop to the Games and a design legacy for East London that will endure long after the Olympic and Paralympic Torches have been extinguished.1 However, contrary to the optimism of the ODA, host cities often find themselves unable to maintain the facilities after the events are over. In this article Ilook at Olympic design against this particular background, using the 2004 Athens Olympics as the primary example in a discussion on what happens when Olympic design falls into decline. More precisely, I investigate the Athens Olympic Sports Complex (the Olimpiako Athlitiko Kentro Athinon or OAKA) with particular focus on the post-Olympic condition[1]. In recent years, as several commentators have warned the London 2012 organizers of the potential pitfalls of being an Olympic host, Athens 2004 has commonly been referred to as an utter failure in terms of legacy issues:
A staggering 21 out of 22 venues lie abandoned since an event lasting just three weeks was held, and the magnificent stadiums are now over-run with rubbish and weeds. But the most striking legacy has been the huge sums spentand wastedon venues to hold sports with little following in Greece. And yet the madness does not end there: annual maintenance of the empty sites has cost almost 500million since the event.2

This way, Athens 2004 has surfaced as a natural point of reference in current debates on the design legacy of London 2012. But there are many differences between Greece

The Author [2012]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. Advance Access publication 28 July 2012.

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Fig 1. Unwanted symbols and unruly vegetation at the OAKA. Photo by Anestis Symeonidis (December 2010). Reproduced with permission from Anestis Symeonidis

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and the UK, and in the ways in which Athens and London have handled the Olympic preparations. While the UK has the third largest population in Europe, Greece was, when they took on the 2004 Games, the smallest nation to host the Games since Finland in 1952. Hosting the Olympics is always going to be an extra strain for a small economy. The UK is a keen spectator sporting nation where sporting events tend to draw large crowds.3 Greece also has a sporting culture of significance, but even a popular sport like football has been unable to fill the Olympic Stadium after the Olympics. London already had a range of world-class arenas when they were handed the Olympics. The organizers could therefore concentrate on staging new venues rather than refurbishing outmoded facilities, as they did in Athens. Reuse could have been advantageous to Athens, especially since Athens did not need another huge sports complex in addition to the OAKA. Refurbishing is often expensive, however, and in the event the constant discoveries of archaeological finds meant that the process of finalizing the arenas was time-consuming beyond anything London has had to cope with.4 The urban renewal plans for Athens 2004 included large parts of the city and the wider Attica region; an immense scope compared to Londons focus on East London. London had fresh expertise from regeneration projects such as the Docklands.5 In comparison, Athens had limited experience when the city embarked on many ambitious renewal schemes ahead of the Olympics. While London and Athens are different in many ways culturally, geographically and socio-economically, there are some similarities as well. In both cases, the organizers had to solve unexpected security issues. Athens 2004 was deeply affected by 9/11, which resulted in the quadrupling of the total spending on security, whilst preparations for 2012 have been influenced by the bombing of the London Underground in 2005. Greece introduced increased taxes, cuts in public spending and wage restraints to realign its economy ahead of the Games. In London, extra taxes have been put on households to enhance the Olympic revenue.6 Furthermore, the Olympic budgets are similar, in the sense that they are primarily split between state and city agencies.7 This is not an unsurprising link, as this is the common way of dealing with Olympic budgets, with the privatized model for the 1984 Los
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Angeles Olympics being a notable exception. As the British economist John F. L. Ross has pointed out, the split budget was a major concern throughout the planning of Athens 2004.8 London 2012 is facing the same challenge, only with a greater level of complexity, because the London budget is spread across many more agencies in comparison with that of Athens.9 The two Olympiads are further connected because Athens 2004 has been serving as an important backdrop for discussions of London 2012. As Andrew Malone of The Daily Mail wrote in 2008, Four years before the first starting pistol has been fired for London 2012, there are echoes of Athens.10 In spite of such comments, the organizers have continued to promote London 2012 as an opposite to Athens, and Iwill be exploring the grounds on which this distinction is being made. This distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to define in the wake of economic turbulence in Britain and its impact on the Olympic budgets.11 This factor alone calls for a comparative discussion of Athens and London.

Olympic design and itslegacies

I approach the concept of Olympic design from an angle outlined by William J. R. Curtis, who uses the term instant monumentality to explain the characteristics and rhetorical effects of architecture of an overwhelming scale,12 which is often a hallmark of Olympic facilities. Curtis applies this concept to the architectural heritage of Nazi Germany, with particular emphasis on the staging of political mass rallies in which large-scale architecture would heighten the dramatic effect; this approach was woven into the Olympic tradition via the Berlin 1936 Olympics. Instant monumentality also implies another element, namely that of a monumental memorial, which has to do with the commemorative qualities of architecture. Both these meanings of the concept apply to the architectural design created for Athens 2004 by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who was commissioned to do the overall planning of the OAKA in 2001. The primary target of this analysis is the Athens Olympic Stadium [2], the main arena of the Games, and some of the adjoining projects developed by Calatrava. Ibase my exploration of these facilities on my own field work undertaken on site in 2006 and studies of recent literature and mediareports. I appropriate the term Olympic legacy from two key texts on London 2012: the aforementioned Designing for Legacy, and Our Promise for 2012,13 a leaflet published by the

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Fig 2. Athens Olympic Stadium. Photo by Barbara Burg & Oliver Schuh (2004). Reproduced with permission from Palladium Photodesign

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Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2007. These publications propose a wide set of legacy criteria, including the overall objective of regenerating East London, and specific initiatives such as the greening of Stratford, the facilitation of sustainable living, the initiation of community projects and the creation of job opportunities. While these overarching ambitions certainly are instrumental to Londons legacy bid, Iwill limit my analysis to the Olympic Park, which is crucial to the organizers ambition of creating memorable, adaptable, reusable and inclusive arenas with a real sense of place after the Games.14 The architectural design legacy of London 2012 is based on the premise of avoiding the large scale monumental approach that marks the Olympic venues in Athens and the most recent host city, Beijing. Hence, London 2012 is supposedly more focused on after-effects than the event itself, as Graeme Evans argues.15 However, as the Olympic Park in Stratford now has moved from vision to reality, attention must be directed at the facilities themselves. This backdrop forms the lens of my reading of Athens 2004, which aims to highlight the peculiar circumstances that occur when large scale Olympic architecture falls into disrepair.
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Athens 2004: Bringing it all backhome?

When Calatrava was handed the task of transforming a twenty-year old sports complex in Athens into an Olympic Park, his duty was to design state-of-the art sports venues that would also have to reflect the rich cultural history of Greece. In addition, the organizers wanted to make a statement about Greek national identity and forge a new image of what Greece might represent in the twenty-first century.16 Calatrava approached this complicated brief by introducing a new layout for the sports complex and by re-designing all the existing buildings. Several of these, such as the Velodrome, were garnished with Calatravas trademark design features [3]: spectacular hovering

Fig 3. The Athens Olympic Velodrome. Photo by David Smith (January 2006). Reproduced with permission from David Smith. David Smith

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roofs held together by sophisticated cable systems, massive but slender-looking supporting columns and predominantly white surfaces with a slickfinish. The dominant feature of the OAKA is the Athens Olympic Stadium, a 72,000 capacity stadium for football and athletics, occasionally used for concerts and other cultural events. The stadium epitomizes Calatravas redesign of the complex and the organizers quest for a signature look for the Games. Once a simple concrete bowl, its framework partly hidden below ground level, it was provided with a new monumental outlook for the Olympics. A hanging roof made from laminated glass and polycarbonate, kept in check by two gigantic steel arches, was lifted into position just in time for the opening ceremony. The White Elephants, as the steel arches were nicknamed when the construction workers struggled to erect them, went from being a symbol of poor planning to a proud icon of the Games; the ultimate provider of Curtiss instant monumentality. As the most potent architectural trademark of the stadium, the arches certify a commemorative meaning and, as it were, a rhetorical meaning. They were the focal points of the multimedia events that took place during the Olympics, especially in the opening and closing ceremonies, when the stadium was set ablaze with light shows, sound and video projections. As for Calatrava, he was hailed for adding another prestigious work to his impressive portfolio. According to the architect himself, however, it was never his intention to stamp his own signature on the project. When asked about the design strategy for OAKA, he explained that The plan is classical, the elevations are Byzantine, and the spirit is Mediterranean.17 It is possible to read the OAKA in accordance with Calatravas design motto. The symmetrical shape of its main square, the Plaza of Nations, is reminiscent of the layout of an ancient Greek theatre. The functional aspects of the Plaza of Nations adhere to the principles of the Agora, a place of social gathering in the cities of Ancient Greece. Calatrava even took the word Agora to name one of the most elaborate design elements of the OAKA [4]; a semi-circular access route for pedestrians,

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Fig 4. The OAKA Agora pathway. Photo by Barbara Burg & Oliver Schuh (2004). Reproduced with permission from Palladium Photodesign

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covered with 99 steel arches. The four entrances to the OAKA are based on the concept of the Stoa, the architectural framework of a public building in ancient Greekcities. The presence of Byzantine architecture is more elusive. By Byzantine elevation, Calatrava refers to the array of arches, columns and vaults that dominate the elevated layers of his design. But in an abstract version such as this, they could easily refer to other architectural traditions in which such elements are important. The intended traces of Byzantine architecture become more evident, perhaps, when considered in relation to the implied Mediterranean elements, which are made visible through certain recurring colours: blue, ochre and white. These colours are deeply embedded in the Mediterranean vernacular that Calatrava studied early in his career. Together these elements make up a kind of postmodern design package: the figurative language of different historical architectures combined with Calatravas proto-futuristic shapes. However, for all its postmodern vibrancy and frequent referencing of Greek cultural history, there is reason to argue that the real striking force of the OAKA design is the strong reliance on modernist design principles. Every arena fulfils a highly specific functional task, resembling a modernist system of zonal planning. One could say that most sports arenas are characterized by a strict emphasis on functionality, and therefore that the OAKA is no different from the rest, but there is nevertheless reason to argue that it relies on distinct derivations from certain modes of modernist architecture. The whiteness of the polished surfaces and the stripped-down columns mimic aspects of Le Corbusiers work in the 1920s, when he perfected the idea of the White Cube, and turned abstractions of classical Greek temples into modernist schemes.18 The modernist idiom is also quite evident when the purpose of the OAKA is taken into consideration. It was designed with a very precise time period in mind, namely the sixteen days of the Olympics. The act of designing a set of grand scale architectural entities which are connected by their temporal nature and conceptual equality gives rise to associations with the great exhibitions of modernist architecture in the 1920s. Arepresentative example is the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, which served as a big rally for modernist architects to display their latest ideas in a 1:1 scale. But while the architecture on display during the Weissenhofsiedlung became a vehicle for long-lasting effects, and partly survives as a permanent built environment, the OAKA lost its momentum after the Olympics were over.

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The aftermath
Due to rather demanding circumstancesCalatrava only had three years to complete the Olympic Park and a series of strikes and other interruptions added more misery to the hastened operation19the OAKA was completed just ahead of the Opening Ceremony on 13 August 2004. On completion, the Olympic Stadium had expanded three times beyond the original budget, and it was not the only arena that failed to comply with pre-Olympic financial calculations.20 The economic excess was never a big issue during the Olympics, when the whole world applauded a smooth-running spectacle, or in the immediate aftermath, when Athens basked in the glory of having hosted what many commentators lauded as a flawless Olympics. But the postscript of the Games has revealed a significant amount of problems connected with the OAKA. Critical post-Olympic reports began to emerge in 2005, when the Greek media started to question the lack of maintenance plans. It is not entirely true that no such plans had been discussed, but, as Margaret M. Gold argues in her
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analysis of the Games, a proper strategy for subsequent use never materialized.21 Journalists were also beginning to criticize the relentless money-spending ahead of the Games, while also enquiring about the apparent lack of revenue increase for the city of Athens.22 Despite this surge of critical comments, Greek politicians and officials kept defending Athens 2004. Dora Bakoyannis, the Mayor of Athens during the Games, backed the Olympics by calling attention to the infrastructural improvements that were carried out in Athens and the general refurbishment of the central area. She also claimed that the economy of the city had actually survived the extra expenditure.23 This was, however, written in 2008, and one has to take into account that the dramatic collapse of the Greek economy was yet to come. The official messages only seemed to generate even fiercer debates. The international press soon entered the field as well, shifting attention more directly over to the OAKA, as the planning of London 2012 entered a critical stage. In 2009, the British journalist Robert Mendick brought attention to just how bad the conditions were only five years after the Games: A diving pool with four inches of stagnant water, brand new stadia mothballed and derelict, an Olympic complex all but abandoned and strewn with litter and graffitithis is the legacy from the Athens Olympics in 2004.24 Other reports were even more dismissive of the OAKA, pointing out the huge amount of money spent on what quickly developed into a wasteland of derelict architecture and spaces full of rubbish and weed.25 This goes for the Swimming Pools and the tubular walkway in particular [5& 6], but the Plaza of Nations has also felt the impact of the post-Olympic decline [7]. Even the Olympic Stadium, which is still being used for football and the occasional stadium concert, has been criticized for its dirty seat backs and stained walkways [8].26 And while one could certainly question the accuracy of the negative reports concerning Athens, the general level of activity is certainly low for a sporting facility of this size.27

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Fig 5. OAKA is crumbling. Brown plaque is disturbing the shiny whiteness of the walkway. Photo by the author (May 2006)

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Fig 6. The tubular walkway is littered with graffiti. Photo by Nikos Daniilidis (2012). Reproduced with permission from Nikos Daniilidis Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on August 23, 2012

Fig 7. The Nation Wall, the gigantic sculpture at OAKA, has been reduced to a graffiti platform. Photo by Anestis Symeonidis (December 2010), from the series Athens 2004 OlympicsDead Olympic Facilities. Reproduced with permission from Anestis Symeonidis

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Fig 8. The stairs of the Olympic Stadium are damaged by moisture. Nikos Daniilidis (2012). Reproduced with permission from Nikos Daniilidis

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The White Cube in decay

While these reports were paying close attention to the Olympic facilities, they somehow failed to address the fundamental changes with regards to the architectural design. How can we engage with this question at a more specific level? Having previously outlined the distinctly modernist characteristics of Calatravas work in Athens, Ifind the work of Leonardo Benevolo to be an interesting starting point of this enquiry. In the course of his two-volume book on modernist architecture, Storia dellarchitettura moderna,28 Benevolo had become fascinated with the topic of architecture and maintenance. The book looks beyond the iconic presentation of modernist masterpieces such as the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, and questions the fact that they are always presented in a perfect condition when appearing in publications. To underline this perspective Benevolo presents images in which these icons are displayed in run-down states, ravaged by weather and lack of proper care. This condition, argues Benevolo, calls for a different interpretation of them, because they rely on iconic qualities produced by materials that have lost their visual seductiveness:
This type of finish [white plaster] emphasized problems of maintenance and, though cared for equally carefully, the Bauhaus building has certainly aged worse than the Fagus factory; but this consequence must be seen in relation to the new concept of architectural values. If architecture is not to restrict itself entirely to representing the aspirations of society but is to contribute to realizing them, then architectural products have value in relation to the life lived in them and do not last like natural objects, independently of men, but must be made to last with appropriate processes. For this reason, now that the original life of the place had been dispersed and that the work is reduced to a pathetic heap of shattered walls and door and window frames, to all intents and purposes the Bauhaus no longer exists; it is not a ruin, like the remains of ancient buildings, and it has no physical fascination.29
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This argument is investigated in Panayotis Tournikiotiss critical reading of Benevolo in The Historiography of Modern Architecture.30 Reflecting on Benevolos interpretation of the Bauhaus Building, Tournikiotis confirms the unravelling of the myth of the White Cube as a highly relevant perspective in cases where buildings have undergone noticeable changes. According to Tournikiotis, One could go as far as to say that the Bauhaus building no longer exists, since its true life has vanished.31

OAKA and the post-Olympic emptiness

Can one really claim that the OAKA disappeared after the 2004 Olympics were over? This would be a probable conclusion if we are to take Benevolos and Tournikiotiss verdicts seriously. The matter is, however, not as straightforward as they seem to suggest. When dealing with the question of loss and lack of physical fascination, in the case of the OAKA, one needs to investigate the aspect of temporariness more closely. The site does have the characteristics of a closed exhibition. Moreover, it alludes to the nature of an architectural pavilion which, provided that one accepts that analogy, fuels the perception of the OAKA as a distinctly temporary concept. But, unlike some of the well-known architectural pavilions of the past, e.g. the Barcelona pavilion by Mies van der Rohe, none of the elements of the OAKA have been removed from their original place. They are not lost in a concrete, physicalway. So the actual reason for the sense of loss lies somewhere else. When walking the post-Olympic version of the OAKA one gets the feeling of venturing into a state of lifelessness; the lifelessness of a place where something exciting has taken place but is emphatically over. The OAKA is designed to accommodate 300,000 people and to host grand scenarios. The post-Olympic mode gets nowhere close to replicating the scale and visual extravaganza of the Olympic events. To explain this shift in character, one could turn to a set of scholarly conceptions of the cultural production of place. In a study on the spatial impacts of sports facilities, Niels Kayser Nielsen uses the term topocide to describe places that for various reasons have been robbed of their place identity.32 This is applicable to the OAKA, where the removal of the Olympic context has reduced it to a collection of generic sports facilities; it has become a general place with no discernible qualities. This state of placelessness, as Kayser Nielsen calls it,33 relates to Marc Augs theory of non-places,34 a term he coined to frame the loss of place identity that might occur at certain sites, especially places marked by quick transfers, when a high level of mobility is in operation. With the Olympics being a very mobile, nomadic concept, Augs theory certainly captures some of the loss of meaning that causes the post-Olympic OAKA to be experienced as void and empty. It is however important to point out that Augs idea of non-places has been subject to strong criticism over the past years. Tim Cresswell, for instance, has been countering Augs theory by revealing how even the most extreme travelling spaces, e.g. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, are signified by individual elements and describable characteristics.35 Cresswell highlights the distinct practices that apply to a place like Schiphol; practices that mark out this airport as different to others. But with regards to the OAKA, it is difficult to claim that the current site performs any kind of practice that could reinvent the Olympic mode. Even on occasions when the facilities are being used, for example when fans of AEK Athens F.C. occupy the Plaza of Nations prior to matches, it is never a full-scale re-enactment of the Olympic spectacles for which the OAKA was designed. The Olympic buildings still remain, but they somehow serve
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to amplify the loss and underline the irreversible fact that the Olympics will probably never return. Few Olympic hosts would ever expect, or wish, to revive the Games after they are over. But in the case of OAKA, the referential qualities of the design were so strongly connected to the Olympic mode that the current site appears emptied of meaning, especially since no consistent alternative of cultural production has emerged. Ahollow and vacant monumentality is all that is left.

A paler shade ofwhite

The other aspect of this, towards which Benevolos work points, is the apparent lack of physical attraction. The derelict condition challenges OAKAs position as the icon of the Athens games. This is connected with Benevolos thoughts about the value, or rather the reduction in value, which whiteness represents in modernist architectural design. A widespread use of white has been a key factor throughout Calatravas career as an architect. According to Alexander Tzonis, the author of two books on Calatravas work,36 the white is a result of Calatravas effort at trying to integrate Mediterranean impulses in his architectural practice. Out of this fascination with the Mediterranean vernacular came the concept of white time, drawn from a belief in the universal and eternal qualities of the colour white.37 Calatrava made use of this recipe to develop his personal architectural brand in which the Mediterranean vernacular white became a token of continuity independent of place and context. But without this inside knowledge of his architectural philosophy, however, it is very difficult to differentiate the Mediterranean from the general imprint of his work. Jilly Traganou uses the label the Rhetoric of Mediterraneanism to capture this aspect of Calatravas architecture. Few questioned the similarities between the architects work in Greece and the rest of his buildings throughout the world,38 she writes in her analysis of the convincing visual rhetoric at work in Calatravas OAKA project. With this in mind, the intended references to the Mediterranean become ambiguous. More than anything else, Calatravas work at the OAKA is self-referential; it points at obvious continuities in Calatravas portfolio rather than subtle continuities within Greek culturalhistory. Also, one could certainly question the idea of white time in light of Benevolos observations on how vulnerable white is when applied to the exterior of a building. Calatravas concept therefore becomes rather paradoxical when the general downfall of OAKA is considered. What used to be a spectrum of crisp white surfaces was in fact reduced to a garish mixture of green, brown and grey shortly after the Olympics. With unruly, wild-growing vegetation, empty pools and piles of rubbish completing the picture it has become increasingly difficult to think of white as an eternal presence on site [9]. The materials, colours and symbols imbedded in Calatravas design are too dependent on the Olympic context to have a valuable afterlife. The architecture reminds us that the Olympics are not forever. And when Olympic design is bereft of its intended context, it immediately loses its potential as a timeless object and becomes, instead,dated. The problem is that the OAKA was not really planned and designed for a life after the Olympics. As several critics have revealed, no proper document for later use was ever provided.39 This factor, fuelled by the unfortunate fate of the Greek economy, is the primary reason why the OAKA never experienced a successful transition from Olympic to post-Olympic mode. Athens 2004 never had a legacy company, like London does (the Olympic Park Legacy Company), and the facilities at the OAKA have been left to their own devices. It has to be noted, however, that opinions on architecture often change
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Fig 9. OAKA is crumbling. Discoloration of the broken OAKA tiles. Photo by the author (May 2006)

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over time. In some cases, problematic projects find justice several years after their inauguration. Afuture rejuvenation of the OAKA might counter the current negative reception. There are, however, specific issues that make it particularly difficult for Olympic hosts to manage this. The Olympics are expensive and colossal by the nature of the concept and, consequently, functionally and visually demanding beyond most other urban design projects. The Games are a short-lived presence that ignites an instant monumentality, as Curtis calls it, and the overwhelming scale is bound to leave a vast range of facilities in constant need of maintenance. And even if the necessary resources are available, there will always be a longing after the great event that enabled these structures. In the case of Athens 2004, the specifics of the Olympic design strengthen the validity of this interpretation. The heavy reliance on vulnerable elements like smooth surfaces and the cultural and visual qualities of the white colour makes the demise of Athens 2004 more obvious and articulate than in any other Olympic example. The architecture is not the direct cause of the sites downfall, but it does represent the physical, visual and symbolical manifestation of it. It is therefore my view that the architecture must be regarded as quintessential in our understanding of the Athens 2004 legacy.

Conclusion: looking toLondon

As the architectural icons of the OAKA have crumbled in parallel with the Greek economy, their ghost-like presence has become more bleak and problematic with every passing year. According to some reports, the citizens of Greece are still footing some of the bill for the Games.40 Due to a challenging build-up to the Olympics and a lack of preparation of the Olympic site for subsequent use, the design legacy of Athens 2004 remains a troubled topic. This is precisely why London 2012 has been

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seeking to facilitate the Olympic Park by means of down-scaling, temporary structures and strategies that are supposed to benefit the local area when the Olympics are over. But, despite the seemingly thorough legacy plan, London 2012 is currently under close scrutiny from media and experts, who have questioned whether the design legacy really is achievable.41 Will all the promises be fulfilled once the Olympics are over and the venues are handed over to other agents? It is symptomatic, perhaps, that the centrepiece of Londons down-scaling strategy may be reversed. The new Olympic Stadium was planned and built as a temporary large scale arena, but as West Ham United have swooped to claim it, old decisions are about to be overturned. Instead of going into recycling, the unassuming steel framework of the stadiums upper tiers is now set to become a permanent fixture. Even if the post-Olympic owners choose to maintain the stadium as a resource for the people of Stratford, the symbolic effect of this u-turn is altogether significant. By this recent turn of events, the London Olympic Stadium might not be as different to the one in Athens after all, no matter how hard the 2012 organizers embrace the legacy dream. And even if the Olympics were to provide London with rewarding elements, such as new housing and shopping centres, the city is still stuck with a sports complex of some scale. Athens 2004 did include a run of projects that have been perceived as successful, for example the new metro lines and the new airport, and one might argue that these projects are the true legacy of the games. But the post-Olympic reception, particularly that of the international media during the build-up to London 2012, demonstrates that the legacy rests quite heavily on the fate of the arenas. Success in other fields is often overlooked by critics if the main complex fails. My critical engagement with the OAKA shows, Iwould argue, that the architectural centrepieces play a crucial role in deciding between failure and success when design legacy is concerned. As more and more of the wider London legacy seems to falter,42 the main complex will therefore be of even greater importance. Given the current state of the British economy, there is reason to claim that many of the analytical parameters that apply to Athens 2004 will be relevant for the post-Olympic mode in London. As much as it remains speculation for now, it does remind us of just how complex and potentially troubled the idea of Olympic design legacyis. Even Smith Wergeland Oslo School of Architecture and Design E-mail: even.wergeland@aho.no Born in Stavanger, Norway, in 1981, Even Smith Wergeland is a doctoral candidate at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design , Institute of Form, Theory and History, and member of the multi-disciplinary research project Routes, Roads and Landscapes. His ongoing thesis, From Utopia to Realitythe Motorway as a Work of Art, explores the motorway aesthetics at play in post-war architecture. Wergelands research interests include urban mobility, utopian cityscapes and sports architecture. His latest publications are: Aerocabs and Skycar Cities: Utopian Landscapes of Mobility, in Routes, Roads and Landscapes, M. Hvattum, B. Brenna, B. Elvebakk & J. K. Larsen (eds), Ashgate, Farnham, 2011; Low Rise Intensities, in Nordic Journal of Architecture, no. 1, 2012; and Driving Spaces and the Dilemma of the Green City, in Green Oslo, M. Luccarelli & P. G. Re (eds), Ashgate, Farnham, 2013 (forthcoming).
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Notes
1 In D. Higgins & N. Serota (eds.), Designing for Legacy, Olympic Delivery Authority, London, 2009, p.1. 2 In A. Malone, Abandoned, derelict, covered in graffiti and rubbish: What is left of Athens 9billion Olympic glory, Mail Online, 18 July 2008 <http:// w w w. d a i l y m a i l . c o . u k / n e w s / a r t i c l e - 1 0 3 6 3 7 3 /Abandoned-derelict-covered-graffiti-rubbish-What-l eft-Athens-9billion-Olympic-glory.html#ixzz1Q1QY3cpH> accessed 7 December 2011. 3 See G. Evans, London 2012, in Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the Worlds Games, 18962012, J. R. Gold & M. M. Gold (eds.), Routledge, London, 2007, p.301. 4 See M. M. Gold, Athens 2004, in Gold & Gold, op. cit., pp.2701. 5 See Evans, op. cit., p.300. 6 See ibid., p.303. 7 The budget for Athens 2004 was split between the organizing committee (the ATHOC), the Greek government, the municipality of Athens and the Olympic village company. See J. F. L. Ross, Olympic HomecomingGreece`s Legacy and the 2004 Athens Games, Explorer, Athens, 2004, p.218. 8 Ibid. 9 The London 2012 budget is divided between the organizing committee (the LOCOG), the ODA, the National Lottery, the Greater London Authority, the London Development Agency, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. For a more detailed account on the governance of London 2012, see G. Poynter, London: Preparing for 2012, in Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of London, G. Poynter & I. MacRury (eds.), Ashgate, Farnham, 2009, pp.1879. 10 See Malone, op. cit.. 11 See Poynter, op. cit., p.196. 12 W. J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1996, p.355. 13 The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Our Promise for 2012, DCMS, London, 2007. 14 In Higgins & Serota, op. cit, p.1. 15 See Evans, op. cit., p.299. 16 See J. Traganou, National and Post-national Dynamics in the Olympic Design: the Case of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, Design Issues, vol. 25, no. 3, pp.7691, and Ross, op.cit. 17 In B. Libby, Calatrava`s Classical Greek, Architecture Week, 20 October 2004, p. 2 <www.architectureweek. com/2004/1020/design_1-2.html> accessed 7 December 2011.
Even Smith Wergeland

18 Le Corbusiers obsession with pure surfaces, smoothness and geometrical order is omnipresent in Towards a New Architecture (1923), most notably in the chapter called Architecture III: Pure creation of the mind. See Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1986, pp.199223. 19 For further insights on the specifics of the rather turbulent planning process, see Gold, op. cit., pp.2702. 20 See Ross, op. cit., p.147. 21 The [final] plan diluted the logic of concentrating development in major nodes by a policy that suggested post-Games use, in which facilities were more widely spread in the community. In reality, however, there was no proper strategic planning for the period after 2004, with the plan containing apparent contradictions. Gold, op. cit., p.272. A similar conclusion is made by Elias Beriatos and Aspa Gospodini from the Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly. See E. Beriatos & A. Gospodini, Glocalising urban landscapes: Athens and the 2004 Olympics, Cities, vol. 21, no. 3, 2004, p.192. 22 See K. Grohman, Karolos, From square one on Games venues` use, Athens News, 25 February 2005. 23 D. Bakoyannis, The legacy of the 2004 Athens Games, Peoples Daily Online, 7 August 2008 <http://english. peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91345/6467995.html> accessed 7 December 2011. 24 R. Mendick, The 2004 Olympic legacy that London must avoid, The Evening Standard, 6 February 2009 <http:// www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23636200-the -2004-olympic-legacy-that-london-must-avoid.do> accessed 7 December 2011. 25 See S. Usborne, After the Party: what happens when the Olympics leave town?, The Independent, 19 August 2008 <http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/ after-the-party-what-happens-when-the-olympics-leave -town-901629.html> accessed 7 December 2011, and Malone, op.cit. 26 See P. Hersh, Athens post-Olympic legacy: Empty spaces, unsightly venues, uncertain tomorrow, Cityscapes, Chicago Tribune, 4 August 2008 http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune. com/theskyline/2008/08/athens-post-oly.html accessed 3 June 2012. 27 With the exception of notable events like the Roger Waters concert on 8 July 2011 and three stadium concerts in 2010, the OAKA is scarcely used to host events that resemble the 2004 Olympics in scale and splendour. 28 The book was first published in Italian, as L. Benevolo, Storia dellarchitettura moderna, Guiseppe Laterza & Figli, Bari, 1960. I have consulted the second volume of the English

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translation from 1971: L. Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, vol. 2: The Modern Movement, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1971. 29 In Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, op. cit., pp.4268. 30 P. Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, & London, 1999. 31 Ibid., p.105. 32 In N. Kayser Nielsen, The Stadium in the City: A Modern Story, in The Stadium and The City, J. Bale & O. Moen (eds.), Keele University Press, Keele, 1995, p.23. 33 Ibid. 34 M. Aug, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso, London & New York, 1995. 35 See Chapter 9, The Production of Mobilities at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, in T. Creswell, One the Move: Mobility in the Western World, Routledge, London, 2006, pp.21958. 36 A. Tzonis & S. Calatrava, Santiago Calatravathe Athens Olympics, Rizzoli, New York, 2005, and A. Tzonis, Santiago Calatravathe Complete Works, Rizzoli, New York, 2004.

37 See A. Tzonis, op. cit., p.374. 38 In J. Traganou, Mobile Architects, Static Ideas: Santiago Calatrava in Athens, in Travel Space Architecture, J. Traganou & M. Mitrasinovic (eds.), Ashgate, Farnham, 2009, p.217. 39 See Grohman, Karolos, op. cit., and R. Panagiotopoulou, The 28th Olympic Games in Athens 2004, in Poynter & MacRury, op. cit., pp.14950. 40 See Usborne, op. cit. 41 See A. Vigor & M. Mean, After the Goldrusha Sustainable Olympics for London, IPPR and DEMOS, London, 2004, and P. Kelso, London 2012: Serious questions remain about Olympic legacy, The Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2009<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/ olympics/london2012/5758718/London-2012-Seriousquestions-remain-about-Olympic-legacy.html> accessed 7 December 2011. 42 See A. Warner, How the financial crisis could hit London 2012, BBC Sport, 30 September 2011 <http://www.bbc. co.uk/blogs/olympics/2008/09/how_the_financial_crisis_ could.html> accessed 4 January 2012.

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