Populous transformed London's Greenwich Park into a stadium for equestrian events for the London 2012 Olympics. (Photo by Getty Images)
There is more to a venue than concrete and steel. Maintenance and utilities are significant costs, and programming a facility and keeping it booked is a challenge in itself. In order to combat buildings sitting empty, organizers and architects are relying more and more on temporary facilities to support one-off, large-scale events like the Olympics.
“The driving force in building temporary venues is usually considering the legacy or after-use of the facility,” said Populous’ Jerry Anderson. “Many of these venues are so specific and they’re only used once in a lifetime, so it doesn’t make practical or financial sense to build a permanent one.”
AECOM won the contract for the main Olympic Park for Rio 2016 and is building nine venues, four of which are temporary.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
“You need to look at what’s going to be the demand for that particular venue after the event and consider the adaptability of the venue,” said AECOM’s Adam Williams.
Populous served as the official architect for the overlay of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, which included several temporary structures. The 5,000-capacity Water Polo Arena was removed after the games, as well as the course and grandstand at Hyde Park that hosted the triathlon, the 15,000-capacity beach volleyball facility at Horse Guards Parade next to Buckingham Palace, and the 12,000-capacity basketball arena. Also, Greenwich Park, the oldest enclosed Royal Park dating back to 1427, served as the home for the London 2012 equestrian events.
“We wanted to take advantage of those historic places around London and make the games really attractive, intriguing and iconic,” said Anderson. “Most of those facilities there was no way you could build a permanent venue in those locations.”
Other than the ability to build in unique or historic locations, temporary facilities also make sense from a practicality standpoint.
A city won’t usually host the Olympics twice in a short period of time; so temporary venues make more sense because there’s no long-term programming. Even for permanent facilities, sometimes seating is added on temporarily to make the venue work for a large event, then scaled back for legacy use.
London’s Olympic Stadium had 25,000 permanent seats in the lower bowl and 55,000 removable seats.
“You don’t design a church for Easter Sunday because that’s your biggest attendance,” said 360 Architecture’s Chris Lamberth. “If you build something for the Olympics then after the event goes away there’s a huge burden just to maintain the building, let alone filling it.”
MONEY MATTERS
In addition to saving long-term expenses, temporary facilities also provide an immediate cost savings.
Depending on the size, Anderson said that some temporary venues can cost as little as one-fifth the cost of their counterparts. Williams said that for premium, large-scale Olympic venues, building temporary venues can save around 30 percent, with smaller or less high-end facilities having an even larger savings.
“You’re using cost-efficient, reusable mechanical systems and are saving on structural steel,” said Lamberth. “When you’re doing permanent construction there are a lot of capital costs that go into it, so temporary provides a substantial savings.”
Temporary venues also have a faster construction time.
“When you get to a larger scale where it’s 20,000-40,000 seats and you have an elaborate field of play, those might take four months, but the usual standard is 2-3 months,” said Anderson.
There are a few drawbacks to temporary facilities, though. Anderson said that the quality of finishes is more limited in the rental or leasing market.
TRANSITIONAL TEMPORARY
Some temporary facilities are made to be disassembled and used somewhere else, either in the same form or as a completely different building, and some temporary materials are recycled in more traditional ways.
“The Sydney Olympic Stadium had literally 30,000 temporary grandstand seats that were steel decks and steel framing, which had to be recycled,” said Anderson. “The seats went on to other projects while the steel itself was melted down and reused.”
He added that the 12,000-seat basketball arena for the London Olympics was purposefully designed to be taken down and reassembled as an event space.
By choosing shorter-term solutions when constructing temporary venues, such as bolting steel instead of welding, architects keep options open for future uses.
For the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic and Paralympic Games, AECOM is planning to transform at least one of the temporary facilities into schools.
“We looked at how you could break down the 15,000-seat handball arena and then reassemble it,” said Williams. “What we worked out is that it could transform into probably four schools, and there’s a growing demand for education and primary schools in Brazil, and particularly in Rio.”
Interviewed for this story: Jerry Anderson, (816) 221-1500; Chris Lamberth, (415) 362-3601; Adam Williams, (213) 593-8000