To mark the opening of Paris 2024: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
The 2024 Summer Olympics begin this weekend in Paris. As Sven Daniel Wolfe wrote in the Keynote essay of the AR’s recent Sports issue, the Olympic Games are ‘inescapably political’. They are also inescapably architectural. ‘Beyond the drama of elite athletic competition, and behind the spectacle of the opening and closing ceremonies,’ Daniel Wolfe continues, ‘the Olympics are urban mega-projects that have profound impacts on host cities and societies.’
The Architectural Review has covered many of these transformations over the decades, from London to Los Angeles. Seven of these stories are included in our 75th reading list, free to read for registered users for a limited time. Happy reading, and let the games commence.
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Olympic limits: the sporting mega event comes to town, AR June 2024, Sven Daniel Wolfe
‘Sport is not put at the service of humanity, nor aimed at resolving the climate emergency, but rather sacrificed on the altar of the dollar’
Ephemeral Olympics: the carnival spirit of LA 1984, AR August 1984, Derek Walter
‘Festive federalism means trying to steer the Olympiad back to the idea of a festival in which it has its roots’
Rio’s eviction predilection, AR May 2015, Catherine Osborn
‘More than 19,000 families have lost their homes in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics – now Mayor Paes claims another site is needed for an access road’
Outrage: Anish Kapoor’s Olympic monument is a confused mess, AR May 2010, William Curtis
‘It started in a men’s cloakroom at the World Economic Forum, when steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal happened to bump into Boris Johnson’
Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre versus Michael Hopkins’ Velodrome: a London Olympics face-off, AR July 2012, Peter Buchanan
‘Hadid’s Aquatics Centre appears more sleekly athletic, yet its roof is three times heavier’
Architects’ games: what do you want, a medal?, AR June 2024, Kristina Rapacki
‘It is a fact, unlikely though it sounds, that Walter Gropius competed in the Olympic Games’
Civil war, corruption and poverty: the sinister truth behind the Sochi Winter Olympics, AR January 2014, Arnold van Bruggen
‘The mountain cluster resembles a fairytale folly, the meeting of Stalin’s Empire style, alpine architecture and a sort of Disneyesque romanticism’
