31 days left and its time for part 2 of our blogs on architecture of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Next up we look at the Aquatics Centre. This is Origin’s personal favourite, created by Zaha Hadid Architects and has all the ultra modernism and aspiration we’ve come to expect from the in vogue architects. We imagine that many architects in Lincoln and across the world will marvel at this building in many years to come.
Our intial impression was that the canopy over the main entrance looked like a giant whale fin emerging from the sea to provide rain shelter for visitors whilst an aerial view looks more like a mantaray gliding across the ocean bed. However the narrative of the form was developed not from sea creatures but the swimmers form, makes sense really, and a second glance reveals a butterfly kick on the ceiling and the overarm shape of the butterfly stoke on the outside. The ceiling of the venue has lighting fixed into eliptical recesses which give the impression of condensed coalesced water droplets forming on a cold suface. As an internal space, and like most Zaha Hadid designs, its conceptual design provides a flood of inspiration for all those interested in futurism.
The wings on each side of the building are temporary additions for the games and boost the seating capacity from 6000 to 20,000. After the games the wings will be removed and the sides enclosed and supported by an arrangement of structure which look like sets of stairs leading up to a diving board.
The Aquatics Centre has certainly got its pricetag, originally estimated to cost £75 million the bill currently stands at over £250 million and the final bill will not be returned until well after the Olympic Games. We do think it’s easy to be an extravagant architect with an open cheque book, let’s hope you got this one on a percentage of the build cost! However it does amaze us how such a large project can run three and a half times the original budget cost. Surely the best were on the job. Did the main contractor not manage to screw their sub contractors on this one? Or did the QS forget to count by a factor of four? Perhaps with such a grand vision the taxpayer should just accept the costly bill, even in a double dip recession. After all until we can measure and value the physiological response of a human being how are we to really know whether this was worth the extra £175 million.
