Now that the cat is out of the bag and the Japanese government has officially announced Kengo Kuma's stadium proposal as the new winning design for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, all eyes are on Zaha Hadid Architects, design firm of the voluptuous initial winning stadium spaceship which was ultimately pulled back to earth in mid-takeoff by the immense gravity of an outraged public reaction.
Dame Hadid, fighting for a second chance for her redesigned submission until the very last minute, reacted swiftly and issued an expectedly disappointed statement on her website this morning:
“We were honoured to be selected to design a stadium that would enable Japan to welcome the world for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and bring the 2020 Olympic Games to Tokyo, before becoming a new home for Japanese sport for many future generations.
“Sadly the Japanese authorities, with the support of some of those from our own profession in Japan, have colluded to close the doors on the project to the world.
“This shocking treatment of an international design and engineering team, as well as the respected Japanese design companies with whom we worked, was not about design or budget. In fact much of our two years of detailed design work and the cost savings we recommended have been validated by the remarkable similarities of our original detailed stadium layout and our seating bowl configuration with those of the design announced today.
“Work would already be underway building the stadium if the original design team had simply been able to develop this original design, avoiding the increased costs of an 18 month delay and risk that it may not be ready in time for the 2020 Games.”
Zaha Hadid
55 Comments
As far as the architecture goes, the wood is nice enough, but its the same as saying buildings in London should be made from brick or that Tel Aviv should be made with white stone...its just a gesture without a strong architectural intention. Sejima's plan for Bezalel in Israel is what happens when architect thinks about what rules mean. Herzog and DeMeuron's Chelsea stadium in London is pretty compelling that way too.
This project by Kuma is not as convincing yet. But it should be. If this is to be truly a symbol of Japan it should be as great as Tange's swimming pool in Yoyogi park. Kuma has a lot of ability in his office so will hope for the best. So far it looks like the contractors did the design, not him, to be blunt.
About the money side of things, I dunno, thats kind of a bit too late. They shouldn't have made it an international competition if that was part of the criteria. Either way construction will be done by the Japanese mega-builders. which is part of the problem perhaps.
Zaha kept saying she could build it cheaper in a competitive bid on the international market, but that was never going to happen. There is only one, maybe two companies who can build at this scale in Japan, so they set the price (it is also why they were able to give Zaha's work to Kuma to build his design on). Kuma will have no more ability to manage that process than Zaha did, except maybe he will be able to negotiate the local power brokers better as a native than Zaha's team did.
Funny enough, my mother in law was just talking about this and was annoyed by how Toyo Ito is whining that Kuma had an inside track, and that the winning design design copies Zaha with a pastiche overlay. She thinks he sounds like a big baby.
Kuma is such a good politician.
That is the real lesson in all this. He is so amazingly impressive that way. Zaha might have been too complacent with people coming as supplicants in the last years, she didnt realize that there were other issues to deal with if she really wanted to build this thing...
well there you go. PS says architecture isn't political, so i guess ZHA can't navigate politics like the successful architects :)
god damnit i've learned my lesson about browsing this forum at work.
do we need NSFW tags now?
was it Miss Japan in lingerie or Bjarke's tight ski booty?
Tokyo Olympics means nothing to me.
Beijing Olympics meant nothing to me.
London Olympics meant nothing to me.
Other Olympics meant nothing to me.
What matters is the dirty politics/sport industrial complex that exploits millions of workers and for every global scale bribed arm twisting behind the doors of the Olympic Committee.
Boycott Olympics and their hi-tech super human bullshit advertisement for sports equipment / performance drugs industry etc.
Enjoy the little leagues of your town.
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