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Tokyo scraps “bicycle helmet” Olympic stadium – thank goodness

I have not been all that impressed by the much vaunted Zaha Hadid‘s architectural designs. I think her Jockey Club Innovation Tower for Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University is a particularly self-indulgent, 15-storey monstrosity. I find most of her buildings are terribly pompous and bordering on the presumptuous.

I haven’t found any of her designs that I truly like. Some are less grandiose or less offensive than others. But I don’t have to pay for her presumptions.

Hadid Jockey Club

Hadid Jockey Club

She had designed the Olympic Stadium for Tokyo 2020 which looked remarkably like a bicycle helmet and quite ugly. Fortunately it has proven to be too expensive (over 300 billion Yen – c. $2 billion), or perhaps it is an estimate of cost which is being used as the cover story for cancelling a structure which should never have been selected. Whatever the real reason, it has been scrapped.

Thank Goodness.

hadid Tokyo Olympic stadium - image Kyodo

hadid Tokyo Olympic stadium – image Kyodo

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This entry was posted on July 17, 2015 at 11:31 am and is filed under Architecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.