Leading the sports master planning for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, Populous developed the original plan for facility locations, including the overlay planning, and designed the main stadium. The challenge in building a stadium for a specific event lies in creating a structure that is both temporary and permanent. By embracing the temporary, we explored materials, structure and operational systems in a completely different way.

Each component takes a sustainable approach that uses only what is needed for the event and then transforms to a long term future use; the whole process used a minimum of services. The articulate, elegant and lightweight structure frames the building Wrap. This porous, translucent printed fabric allows the building to breathe naturally, using a minimum of fixed mechanical systems.

Through modern printing techniques, we used the Wrap to transmit the Games’ “look and feel” to the rest of the Olympic Park and beyond – to the city of London that surrounds it on all sides and the UK. The water course acted as a natural boundary, with spectator facilities laid out along the soft water edge.