The Collapsible, Flatpacked Olympic Stadium

Any sustainable minded surveyor of large scale events wonders if the expense and waste associated with showpiece stadiums could be reduced, even just a little. Well, the organizers of the London Olympics have a remarkable plan that could offset construction costs, and be sure that their stadium finds a purposeful second life. Currently there are plans in place to dismantle around 70% of the proposed London Olympic Stadium, pack up the components, and send them to the host of the 2016 Olympics! Finally, flatpacked, prefab stadiums!



The concept is part of a new approach to the Olympic Games. Rather than building everything new every four years, the “prefab” stadium idea allows facilities to be built in one city, moved as efficiently as possible and be adapted to existing arenas in the new host city. In the case of London, this particular stadium was specifically designed by HOK Sport to be disassembled and sold on, preventing wasteful obsolescence. The London Olympic Stadium is effectively designed as a 25,000 seat concrete bowl that has an additional 55,000 seats placed on top of it in a temporary structure. It is this entire upper structure which can be moved and installed somewhere else.



Currently, talks are underway with Chicago, but London organizers hope that their offer is taken up by whoever wins the games. If the plan goes forward, this would be the largest amount of seats

Recycled Cardboard Sculpture

With all the exploration of recycled materials in green design these days, the work of artist Chris Gilmour seems like a logical and amusing next step in terms of upcycling and eco-friendly art processes. Gilmour, an English artist based in Italy, re-creates objects and machines from our everyday lives using only packing cardboard and glue. Industrial cardboard is typically used only once for shipping materials and then wastefully discarded. Often adorned with logos and other graphics, the remnants of the material’s former use is an aspect that Gilmour wryly incorporates into his sculptural work, with an ironic wink to the viewer.



Built with stunning detail, Gilmour’s life-size replicas and sculptures leave one gazing at the sheer artistry of his work and contemplating the nature of materials in general. The dedicated energy required to cut and paste all of the intricate and exact parts of a replica Fiat 500 engine, for example, cleverly highlights the energy required to create the real thing. Whereas a car of the usual metal materials might go unnoticed by a passerby, a car constructed of cardboard leaves even the technically un-savvy reveling in its design.



Not all of Gilmour’s cardboard creations are life-sized intricacies. The artist also has a sense of humour about his medium, using cigarette and maxi-pad boxes to make little logo-covered churches in a wry statement about consumer dependency. In totality, Gilmour’s pieces force the viewer to confront the everyday objects in one’s life and our relationship to them with a kind of hilarious grace



Originally Published on Inhabitat