We don’t need icons at Olympic site

The problem is how to build a set of facilities which do the job for the two weeks the Games take place, but which can be remodelled to meet the post-Games needs of the local community.

Take the main stadium. Going from 80,000 seats to 25,000 will take some doing. At the core of the project must be a 25,000-seat stadium with the capability of accommodating 55,000 temporary seats. The iconic part of the project therefore must be the 25,000-seat stadium as that is what will be around long after the Games have finished.

So the challenge is how to make such a temporary structure look good? It depends, I suppose, on who you consider your audience to be. Shiplee’s comment that the people to talk to might include set designers from the film industry makes tremendous sense. As well as the million people likely to attend the Games, up to 3bn people around the world are likely to be watching on television.

I remember some years ago in Bristol as I was leaving work coming across a street which had been done up by a TV crew to look like the Amsterdam canal side street where Anne Frank’s house is situated for the making of a BBC drama. It looked strange at the time, but I remember when the series came on TV it was hard to spot the real Amsterdam from that street in Bristol and it managed to recreate the atmosphere of menace and terror that was around at the time.

What is being suggested is not new. After the Atlanta Olympics the main stadium was remodelled into a baseball park. We need to have that flexibility and the main Olympic stadium does not need to be as iconic or as long lasting as, say, Wembley has to be as the UK’s national stadium.

The Olympic site is a theatre and when the show is over the set should be dismantled ready for the next production. In this case, what follows the Games is the legacy. And those responsible for this will not want the burden of managing something that is no longer fit for purpose.

The challenge for those with the job of delivering the Games will be to think outside the norm, engage specialists in creating illusions and putting on the most fantastic show. Hard as it may be for the construction industry to swallow, the Games are not about construction.

After the Games, when it’s time for the credits to roll, the industry will no doubt receive its accolades and awards, but not for best building here or building there, but for the best set in the 2012 theatre of dreams.