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Olympic Buildings on the Move
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by kate | June 5, 2008 at 10:14 am
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BLDG BLOG reports that the stadium being built for the London Olympics may be disassembled and relocated to Chicago once the games are over. I like the idea of "plug and play" architecture -- where buildings might be reused rather than simply being destroyed - but then I think well maybe this is just another in a long series of solid arguments against having something like the Olympics in the first place, which seems to occasion a whole lot of waste and cultural excess just for 10 days of banal sport action.
The visually underwhelming London Olympics stadium, designed by HOK Sport, might actually be broken down into its constituent parts once the 2012 Summer Games are over and shipped off to Chicago – where it will be partially reassembled.Perhaps this act will open the door to a new choreography of reused, plug-and-play architectural structures, with fragments of existing buildings being FedEx'd around the world to fit one into the other in a delirium of improvised building space. Cathedral pods and office modules meet in a haze of stadium seating and hobby lobbies on the outskirts of San Francisco. New rooms are trucked in from somewhere east of Reno.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 10:29 on June 5th, 2008
I love this idea! I'm not sure if it will ever happen, but even to consider something like this level of recycling is a step in the right direction in my opinion.
See some previous NowPublic coverage here.
at 10:31 on June 5th, 2008
There is a precedent for this. In 1968 Robert P. McCulloch purchased the London Bridge for $2,460,000 and had the bridge removed, brick by brick, and reassembled over a lagoon off the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Apparently, the rumor goes, he thought he was buying Tower Bridge (which would have been a better deal, by weight anyway)... we'll see if Chicago gets what they pay for...
at 10:43 on June 5th, 2008
I think the Olympics should have to move throughout the world with hundreds of useless skating ovals packed in boxes. At each city they will stop and assemble the buildings, use them for 10 days, and pack up again....