Following a day of negative reports in the Observer about London’s 2012 Olympic bid there’s more positive news Monday. The London 2012 bid committee has announced the winning entry in a contest to design London’s first new Olympic venue.
Zaha Hadid, winner of last year’s most coveted architectural prize, has been chosen to design London’s 20,000 seat Olympic Aquatics Centre. His team was chosen from about 200 firms worldwide that submitted designs to the London Development Agency, reports the Evening Standard.
The centre, which will form part of London’s Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has a “spectacular, sinuous S-shaped roof inspired by the flow of water” that according to a London 2012 media release is “certain to make it a London landmark”. It could be completed within three years if all goes as planned.
Two 50-metre pools and a diving pool, each with a spectator arena around it, will host the speed and synchronized swimming, diving and water polo finals. After the Games most of the 20,000 seats will be removed to create “more intimate spaces” for community use, said Keith Mills, chief executive of London 2012.
The health and fitness centre will be kept and the pools could be divided into different sections to accommodate swimmers of all levels.
Sport England donated 40 million pounds of the construction cost and the remaining 30 million pounds will come from the Olympic funding package.
London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone, who is reported to have instigated the design process through the London Development Agency, said that the dramatic images provided a glimpse of a London Games in 2012. “A London Games in 2012 would be the greatest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen, transforming the Lower Lea Valley and creating a lasting legacy of cutting-edge sporting venues for the capital and the nation”.
The mayor responded to the negative reports in the Sunday Observer about London conceding defeat to Paris in its bid for the 2012 Games. The mayor said, “this story is rubbish. Nationally and internationally the London bid continues to gather momentum and support. As the Observer itself admits, London has a brilliant technical bid. The idea that that will carry no weight with the IOC is just nonsense – as is the absurd idea that the race is decided before the IOC’s Evaluation Commission has visited any of the bidding cities. The only thing that is right in the story is that this sort of cynical journalism can damage London’s bid”.
