Olympic Stadium (London) - Structures and Facilities

Structures and Facilities

The stadium design was launched on 7 November 2007. The architect, Populous, is an architectural firm specialising in the design of sports facilities and convention centres, as well as planning of major special events. Construction took four years from 2007 to 2011.

The stadium's track and field arena is excavated out of the soft clay found on the site, around which is permanent seating for 25,000, built using concrete "rakers". The natural slope of the land is incorporated into the design, with warm-up and changing areas dug into a semi-basement position at the lower end. Spectators enter the stadium via a podium level, which is level with the top of the permanent seating bowl. A demountable lightweight steel and concrete upper tier is built up from this "bowl" to accommodate a further 55,000 spectators.

The stadium is made up of different tiers; during the games the stadium was able to hold 80,000 spectators. The base tier, which will be permanent and allow for 25,000 seats, is a sunken elliptical bowl that is made up of low-carbon-dioxide concrete; this contains 40 percent less embodied carbon than conventional concrete. The foundation of the base level is 5,000 piles reaching up to 20 metres deep. From there, there is a mixture of driven cast in situ piles, continuous flight auger piles, and vibro concrete columns. The second tier, which holds 55,000 seats, is 315 metres long, 256 metres wide, and 60 metres high. The stadium is built using nearly four times less steel, approximately 10,700 tons, in the structure than that of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. In addition to the minimal use of steel, which makes it 75 percent lighter, the stadium also uses high-yield large diameter pipes which were surplus on completion of North Sea Gas pipeline projects, recycled granite, and many of the building products were transported using trains and barges rather than by lorry.