Serving not only as stages for athletic dominance but sometimes—Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, for example—as backdrops to political ferment, Olympic stadiums, parks, and monuments carry the weight of more than just the bricks and mortar (and steel and glass and high-tech plastic) that compose them. Olympic stadiums are symbols of a host country’s identity and an indicator of its global significance, both through design and the world-class architects its government can afford to hire to create them. Even in some early Olympic Games, from 1912 to 1948, architects competed alongside other creatives to win gold, silver, or bronze for their sport-related work.
Even without the promise of an Olympic medal, each host city pulls out all the stops to improve its urban fabric and impress other nations while it commands attention on a global sporting stage. For this summer’s Paris 2024 Games, the city has both renovated and built new sport venues in the city and its suburbs and kicked off a massive expansion of its metro system (whose fares will double in price for the duration of the Olympics events).
Because it is often a matter of pride, some of the world’s best architecture has been built specifically for the Olympic Games. AD’s survey of historic Olympic venues spans 19 Games over ten decades, from Los Angeles’s first Summer Olympics in 1932 to London’s third hosting gig in 2012 to Paris’s forthcoming Games this summer.
