While we’re under a year away from the 2012 London Olympics, the Rio 2016 Olympic Committee has not slowed the pace of the preparations for their follow-up games (only 1800 days to go!) to be hosted in Brazil’s second-largest metropolis.
This includes last week’s awarding of the winning project for the “Urban General Plan,” or the plan that sets forth the general layout of the Olympic park and facilities.
The victory went to AECOM, based in Los Angeles, California. The firm was rated as the number one design firm in both 2010 and 2011 by Engineering News-Record and by the Archtectural Record, and is a Fortune 500 company.
The plan has a unique, triangular organization to it, and will extend on a peninsula into the Lagoa de Tijuca, or Tijuca Lagoon, in the southwestern neighborhood of Barra.
The organizing committee hailed the design’s “operational concept, the separate access to athletes and the spectators, the logistics of the transportation system, the execution feasibility and an exclusive way to parking,” and also were impressed by the Legacy plan of the park, which has become one of the biggest issues surrounding Olympic construction given some financial disasters that have been left behind in Games’ past.
Over the next few months, it will be up to AECOM and the various other construction and design firms involved to begin specific planning of the competition spaces, which will bring even more excitement.
Rio will host some events in other parts of the city as well. The open water swimming, for example, will be held east on the coastline at the famed Copacabana Beach, but the main competition will be held in Barra.
Below are pictures of the stadium. For the aquatics competition, the pre-existing outdoor Maria Lenk stadium, which was constructed for the aquatics events of the 2007 Pan Am Games, and can hold about 8,000 spectators, will host diving and water polo. This is a project that was initially criticized for its over-indulgent use of taxpayer funds, but that has curtailed with this Olympic bid as well as it’s increase in use since the Brazilian Olympic Committee took over its administration and increased the usage of the facility. The pool is open wair, though the stands are covered.
Initially, one of the more interesting architectual features is the “Olympic Way,” which is the squiggly road that leads down the center of the zone. Towards the top of the map, and just to the left of the Olympic Way, you will see what is to become the main swimming stadium (I’ve highlighted the two aquatics facilities in yellow). Afterwards, the aquatics facility will be disassembled and turned into a park and retail hub, though that will still maintain the planned circular structure as a legacy.
The Olympic Stadium is not in this main complex, and the opening and closing ceremonies (along with the soccer final that is sure to be massive) will be held at the Estadio do Maracano in the northeastern part of the city. That stadium was built originally for the 1950 World Cup, and will also be the centerpiece of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup. It underwent a renovation in 2006 and is currently closed for another, which is to be unveiled in 2013.
Map of the approved Olympic village. The swimming stadiums are highlighted in yellow
Artist's rendering of the proposed Olympic village. As you can see, the aquatics facility takes up a huge chunk of the skyline, as it has in the past few Olympics.