Main stadium for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The London 2012 Olympic Stadium set a new benchmark in lightweight, flexible stadium design, challenging traditional concepts of venue permeance and laying the foundations upon which the legacy of the Games has been built.
By ‘embracing the temporary’, the stadium achieved the balance between the immediate needs of a large Games stadium against the long-term requirements of a smaller-scale venue. The result was an award-winning, compact, efficient design to host the biggest show on earth.
The stadium structure is simple and elegant, minimising the physical weight, fabrication time and embodied energy of each component. As a result, the building contains under a quarter of the steel used in the main stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Additionally, the design uses surplus large-diameter pipes from North Sea gas pipeline projects. The stadium’s base tier, which accommodates 25,000 spectators, is constructed from low-carbon-dioxide concrete – containing 40% less embodied carbon than conventional concrete.
The design makes full use of the site’s island situation, providing a complete circuit of spectator podium concourse around the stadium, connected by bridges to the main park. This podium concourse promoted the carnival nature of the event, with a perimeter array of spectator facilities distributed along the natural boundary of the water’s edge. During the three hours of an athletics event, spectators were free to move from their seats out onto the podium to visit these colourful clusters of concession pods, with views across the waterways to activities in the adjacent park and venues.
Populous undertook the post-Games transformation of the stadium, which included reducing the capacity of the venue from 80,000 to 66,000, as well as incorporating a new roof to cover every seat and vast improvements to the hospitality offer within and immediately surrounding the ground.

"The Populous-designed London 2012 stadium was a huge asset in the creation of the Opening Ceremonies for the Games. The creative and production teams were immediately struck by the intimacy and beguiling simplicity of the architecture which enabled the audiences to feel close to the action, the emotion of the performers to be vividly felt and the explosive live atmosphere to translate powerfully to a global audience of billions."

BILL MORRIS / London 2012 Director of Ceremonies, Education and Live Sites