Metrospective Olympic Games 2012

The Olympic Delivery Authority has also confirmed that legendary architect Peter Cook is spearheading HOK Sport’s design of the stadium, the centrepiece of the Olympics. Cook promised a “chirpy solution”.
The twin revelations, exclusive to BD this week, should help ease fears that design and architecture are off the games’ agenda as the ODA struggles to keep construction budgets under control amid spiralling overall costs.
A design director has long been missing from the ODA’s line-up, but the omission has become more glaring in recent weeks following Richard Rogers’ threat to boycott the Olympics in protest at how the contracts are being awarded.
Developer Roger Zogolovitch welcomed Burdett’s appointment, saying he was perfect for the job. “It looked as though contractors were going to run the show but this appointment gives clear independence to designers,” he added.
Olympics minister Tessa Jowell was made acutely aware of the mounting concern over the design of the Olympic venues at the RIBA conference in Venice earlier this year, which is thought to have prompted her support for the appointment. Unveiling Zaha Hadid’s drastically scaled back Aquatics Centre this week, ODA chief executive David Higgins claimed: “Design is at the heart of what we are doing here.”
However, behind the scenes there have been concerns that the body lacks architectural and design expertise. With no architect on the ODA board, it has given the role of design champion to Tate director Nick Serota, but he is understood to have felt isolated in trying to push design up the agenda and lobbied for the appointment of a design director.
Burdett, whose official title is principal design adviser, will work three days a week at the ODA, and is likely to be seconded from the GLA’s Architecture & Urbanism Unit, directly advising Higgins and Olympics minister Tessa Jowell. But he admitted that the scale of the challenge meant he was unlikely to be effective on his own.
“The Olympics is a vast stage show and it needs to be thought of like that”
“There is a huge amount of work to be done but whatever happens it isn’t going to be solved by one person part-time,” he said. “I expect there’ll be many more people involved a year from now.”
David Higgins said Burdett’s role would be “preparing competition briefs, advising on the competition process including the setting up of juries, and monitoring the quality of design.” A number of competitions are to be launched early next year for venues including the Velodrome and temporary structures.
Higgins said Burdett would also help deliver “the look of the games”, adding: “The Olympics is a vast stage show and it needs to be thought of like that. It’s about the temporary structures, what they’ll look like and their colour and how they’re branded. There’s also the sculpture, temporary bridges and landscaping. That’s what we’ve got to get right.”
Higgins also told BD of Cook’s involvement with the stadium. The Royal Gold Medallist, one quarter of the iconic collective Archigram, is working on the stadium two days a week with HOK Sport’s Rod Sheard.
Cook said: “It is an exciting time, so many amazing ideas being generated by a dynamic team, this will be like no other stadium in the world. Although the brief is a real challenge, it has allowed us to come up with some great concepts, we are going to do a building that is really cheerful, creates a responsive environment, a really chirpy solution.”
Cook may find his Archigram experience useful as he searches for a solution to the stadium brief, which requires a facility to hold 80,000 people. Archigram made its name with groundbreaking designs for temporary and moveable structures, such as Walking City and Plug In City.
Hadid has reduced the Aquatics Centre’s sweeping sculptural roof by one third and simplified the structure, it was announced this week. Higgins said that changes were not about saving money but “reducing risk”.
(Txt by Amanda Baillieu; Courtesy of www.bdonline.co.uk)