44th DN Galan Athletics Meeting, Stockholm Olympic Stadium

 A sunny evening and the prospect of watching Usain Bolt compete against Tyson Gay (and also Asafa Powell – if he hadn’t suffered a late injury) meant that the historic Stadium was bursting at the seams, for a packed programme of top-class athletics.  It is interesting to sit within a sports stadium that is still fulfilling its function almost a century later and spectators are literally lined along the edge of the track, which brings a strong intimacy to viewing the track events.  A hush fell over the Stadium at 8.57pm as Bolt and Gay lined up for the 100m final and after a couple of ’stand-ups’, Gay exploded from the blocks to inflict only the second defeat of Bolt’s 100m career (both of which have been at this event!).  Gay’s time of 9.84 was a new stadium record, which meant that he picked up a 1 carat diamond, which had earlier been brought into the Stadium by Alice Cooper…!

Alice Cooper delivers the diamonds to the DN Galan event

Tom Jones, from Populous, had spoken earlier in the DN Galan Seminar that had focused on the ‘Golden Decade of Sports in the UK’.  The Seminar also included presentations by PMPLegacy, Visit Britain and a moving speech by Britains most successful paralympic swimmer, Chris Holmes OBE.  The British Ambassador to Sweden, Andrew Mitchell, later interviewed Holmes in the VIP area before the event.

Interview between Chris Holmes OBE and British Ambassador to Sweden

© Brian Griffin - National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Project

PAUL WESTBURY b.1969, TONY AIKENHEAD b.1953 and ROD SHEARD b.1951
By Brian Griffin
18 January 2010, Olympic Stadium, London
 © Brian Griffin – National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Project

The 30 portraits represent the first from a total of 100 commissions which will be displayed at the Gallery each summer over the next three years and form part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.  The portraits include well-known athletes (such as Jessica Ennis and Tom Daly), along with key figures behind the bid for the Games (such as Sir Steve Redgrave and Tessa Jowell) and members of the various design and construction teams working on the Olympic Park – including Paul Westbury (Buro Happold), Tony Aikenhead (Sir Robert McAlpine) and Rod Sheard (Populous) from the Olympic Stadium project.

The portraits were taken by Brian Griffin, an internationally recognised photographer, who has previously captured the construction of the high-speed rail link to St Pancras, and Bettina von Zwehl, and are on display until 26 September 2010 in the Studio Gallery.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Richard Phillips, Managing Director of Silverstone Circuits Ltd, praised the design team Populous and construction team Buckingham Group Ltd, in just 6 months the final layout went from the CAD system to completion and receiving an FIA Category 1 license.

HRH Prince Andrew in his role as Special Representative to the UKTI was invited to open the new circuit. Silverstone is owned by the BRDC, British Racing Driver’s Club, presided over by Damon Hill OBE. In his role as President of the BRDC Damon gave a brief speech before inviting HRH Prince Andrew to become an honorary member of the BRDC.

Before the official opening of the circuit many names from the world of Motorsport, past and present, 2 wheel and 4 wheel, were called forward to help with the unveiling of the new Silverstone logo. Present to help, alongside Damon Hill and Prince Andrew, were: Sir Jackie Stewart, Martin Brundle, David Coulthard, Mark Webber, Christian Horner, Mike Gascoyne, Ron Haslam, Leon Haslam, and Jeremy McWilliams.

The official moment came when Mark Webber, David Coulthard, Damon Hill, Prince Andrew, Richard Phillips, Leon Haslam and Ron Haslam were called forward to witness the blessing of the circuit. The Bishop of Brixworth Rt Rev Frank White conducted a blessing with a prayer and marking the sign of the Cross on the circuit with his Crosier. The blessing was followed by a traditional ribbon cutting and the Motorsport tradition of spraying Champagne in conjunction with some pyrotechnics.

Upon the formalities being completed it was time to put the circuit to use with both bikes and cars. One of the cars was a 2 seater Grand Prix Masters car, with approximately 600Bhp, which Damon Hill used to ferry Prince Andrew around the circuit at high speed. The pair were quickly followed by the father and son duo of Ron and Leon Haslam on a pair of superbikes, then holding back at the end was David Coulthard in the Red Bull demonstration Formula 1 car. David Coulthard drew a somewhat traditional close to proceedings by completing several donuts in the Red Bull leaving thick circle of rubber on the barely 2 week old asphalt.

Photos courtesy of Silverstone Circuits Ltd.

© 2010 Christy Radecic All Rights Reserved

Tom Jones and Maria Villar Canovas, from the Populous office in London, had the opportunity to fly out to Miami and join the Event team for the preparations leading up to the big game. They are currently working on the London 2012 Olympics, so it was interesting for them to work and observe behind the scenes of an event that is almost on the same scale as an Olympic opening ceremony!

© 2010 Christy Radecic All Rights Reserved

In addition to the sporting spectacle, the other feature of a Super Bowl is the ‘Halftime Show’, which can often be more eagerly anticipated by some viewers than the football itself! In 28 minutes a full concert set, including speakers and additional special effects, is wheeled out onto the middle of the field, set up for the main act – who then play a 15-minute set – and then removed from the field to allow play to resume! The main act this year was The Who, who delivered a punchy set of classics amidst a sea of lights, lasers, smoke and fireworks, as well as a cleverly-designed stage set which contained embedded LEDs that provided a wide range of visual backdrops for the group.

The final part of the Populous responsibilities for the Super Bowl is the formation and management of the Post-game presentation area in the middle of the field. At the end of the game, a caravan of golf carts makes their way onto the field, carefully avoiding the advancing players, stewards and temporary staging, to set up the zone for the presentation of the Vince Lombardi trophy to the winning team. The confetti canons ensure that the entire arena is filled with colour as the celebrations begin!

© 2010 Christy Radecic All Rights Reserved

On the Monday after the game, there was a brief opportunity to head down to the Art Deco District of South Beach, where the classic Deco buildings had provided a wonderful backdrop to the Live sites that the NFL had set up to provide entertainment to visiting fans, away from the Stadium. The tranquility of the facades belied the ‘cajun’ celebrations from the night before, although the 50% discount on Colts memorabilia told its own story…!

Eden Park is New Zealand’s premier stadium, and the redevelopment will see the stadium capacity increase to 60.000 for the Rugby World Cup 2011 finals, before reducing to 50,000 in its legacy mode.

<Click here for more images and news on Prince William’s offical visit to Eden Park and New Zealand.

The Mayor of London Borris Johnson congratulated AEG on the success underlining the importance of the venue for the local community as well as London’s overall economic life.Highlights from the music world such as Tina Turner, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Bob Dylan and Sir Paul McCartney just to name a few as well as more exclusive events such as the ATP Tour Finals justified the title of world class entertainment venue that the O2 rightfully holds.

With a line-up of Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Lady GaGa, Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas, Rod Stewart, Lilly Allen amongst others in 2010 a repetition of the previous success is more than likely. Looks like the heavily anticipated “white elephant” that the Dome has been has finally found its destination.

Image c/o Adam Wilson Photography - Installation by Team Stadium and Watson Steel

More details can be found on the ODA website

The process started with laying out the inner cable ring on a temporary works structure, with the access gantry constructed on top of the cables, prior to starting the lift.  Cables were then laid down the seating tier from the compression truss and connected to strand jacks, prior to a careful jacking process to lift the ring towards its final position.  While in the air, all other cables were connected back to the compression truss, before jacking into the final position.

Image c/o Adam Wilson Photography

The next step of the process is to install the 8 radial gantries for access to the roof and for use in the opening and closing ceremonies, followed by the lifting of 14 Sports Light towers (seen on the ground in the photo below).  16m legs will be added to the 5-storey lighting paddles, prior to a single lift from ground level to their final location on the front edge of the tension ring.  These will then be connected with cables back to the compression truss, with a final tension cable connecting all of these towers at their peaks.  Watch this space for more progress photos…….

For the second year running Populous was shortlisted for the WAF awards in Barcelona. This year we saw many young and up and coming architects from around the world as well as many well-known faces , and as always,  some of our more tenacious competitors.  However there was no sense of rivalry, but rather a genuine atmosphere of engagement and interest in seeing and hearing about a huge variety of projects from just about every country you could think of.

Some of our current associate architects from Ireland were there also; and they helpfully piled into the seminar room for our presentation of the O2 Dublin Project.

This Project was shortlisted for the “culture” category. I got up to do the mandatory ten minute presentation just after Rod and Paul Westbury had finished their talk on the 2012 stadium (with sustained applause afterwards from said Rod and Paul Westbury showing their support!). The eventual winner of the “world building of the year”, Mapungubwe Interpretation Center in South Africa by Peter Rich Architects, was also in the culture category. Some of the other “big names” in this category were Miralles Tagliabue Embt, Grimshaw, Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM), UNStudio and Fosters.  Most of these guys were present in the room for the duration and so you really had a sense of presenting your ideas to your peers.

The next day it was Dale’s turn to present the Centre Court Project from Wimbledon. The room was fairly packed and Dale gave a thorough presentation of the history of the building and the challenges of creating such a large technically advanced roof in such a tight envelope. Before Dale was a small sports hall from Australia which became the eventual category winner. This Project was the Berry Sports Hall in NSW Australia by Allen Jack+Cottier. We all agreed it was an interesting small building and that the presentation was really enthusiastic and memorable.

So the challenge for next year is to focus on what makes our buildings so special and perhaps focus on one or two ideas and emphasize them. This is what most of the winners seem to have done.

The programme of events was split between formal seminars , including key note speeches from Foreign Office and Vinoly, and the various teams presenting their projects to the various juries. You could pop in and out from one room to another and it was great hearing architects speaking about architecture to other architects across a huge variety of project types and from many different countries. In addition the great and the good of the worlds of architectural theory/criticism and general academe were there on and off and so it was a good mix of that side of our culture and the many and varied practitioners- young and old – from around the world.

I bumped into old colleagues that I hadn’t seen for over 15 years, and I think we all saw some rising stars from many diverse countries in Asia and Eastern Europe amongst other places. Some architects came up and wondered if we could help them with their projects, and so it was also a forum for exchange and possible future projects.

It seems this event will continue to grow and, as we definitely have many projects coming up next year for inclusion, we hope to be there again.

Paul Westbury (Buro Happold) and Rod Sheard (Populous) at WAF

See New Civil Engineer article for more details

As you approach the building along the Greenway, you encounter a series of open boxes with information panels and art projects relating to the Olympic development.

The main building has a cafe on the ground floor and an education space on the upper floor.  A major disappointment of the structure is that there is no access to the top of the tower to look out over the park, instead access to the viewing gallery on the upper floor is only available by walking through the education space, which is likely to disrupt the teaching sessions.  However, the view out over the Olympic Park provides a wonderful panorama of progress on the largest development site in Europe and an opportunity to check on developments at the Olympic Stadium!