Jim Heverin, project director of Zaha Hadid Architects, responding to news that Japan will start from scratch to design a new Olympic stadium to replace the one designed by award-winning architect Zaha Hadid. (AP)
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It is not the case that the recently reported cost increases are due to the design, which uses standard materials and techniques well within the capability of Japanese contractors, and meets the budge
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sighclops
@zone2surf
Yeah but it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. You're dealing with the perfect storm of corruption here (govt. / amakudari, yakuza & construction industry) paired with a seemingly unlimited budget. Collusion & brown envelopes being the norm here, of course.
zones2surf
The root problem here is what plagues every bid by every competing city for the Olympics: to win the bid. And part of winning the bid is creating "wow" factor around the bid. And competing cities believe that central to this "wow" factor are the facilities, none more important than the main stadium.
I guarantee that when the Tokyo Olympic Committee set forth its parameters for the main stadium when sending out requests for proposals/bids ti the various architects/design firms, nowhere in the parameters was there a stated goal of cost effective / cost minimisation. Rather, I am certain that the firms were requested to submit designs that would be grand, even grandiose.
That, I believe, is the root reason we are where we are. The Committee sent out its RFP, the design firm submitted a design accordingly, the Committee chose it with an eye on maximising its chances of winning the 2020 Games, which it then successfully did. It then, however, had to translate what was in its bid to reality and that was probably the first time anyone really truly focused on cost. Because the goal all along was, first and foremost, to win the Games, having failed before.
HongoTAFEinmate
I smell pork. I reckon the perceived cost blowout has less to do with London and more to do with the building cartels in Japan. Indeed, the big general contractors are on record as considering the Olympic Stadium as being a form of public largesse.
GW
Yeah I read the whole blurb a few days back & this guy dances around things pretty well trying not to offend anyone BUT clearly saying the J-side has the set deadline etc & DIDNT bother to do any real math on the damned thing.
The J-side takes 150% of the blame as the building design wasn't FORCED on Japan! J-govt etc has totally blown it even MUCH bigger than I ever imagined & I imagined colossal cost over runs !!!
SenseNotSoCommon
Which part of reduce/reuse/recycle do you find ironic?
Kronos
In the original news, the sentence after this reads
"The real challenge for the stadium has been agreeing an acceptable construction cost against the backdrop of steep annual increases in construction costs in Tokyo and a fixed dead."
It is difficult for us armchair critics to know exactly how much of the overrun is coming from the design and how much from the corrupt Japanese politicians and construction industry. However having lived in Japan for a long time, it is probably more of the latter than the former.
JeffLee
The office of Zaha Hadid in London is a squat, square and plain brick building dating from around the 1930s. Is that ironic, or what.
ArtistAtLarge
The trend in most modern architecture seems have long strayed from the path of elegant and timeless to complex and convoluted just because they can.
This also means unnecessary stratospheric costs. If a company wishes to pay to build such things, so be it. It citizens are expected to pay for such things, that is wrong.