Building (Jan 20)
Gus Alexander
“I’D BE the first to admit that I’m not the world’s most avid sports fan, but frankly I think the Olympics is pretty much past it as a sporting spectacle “But then, it’s not about sport, is it? To gauge the country’s true attitude to sport, just witness the hundreds of swimming pools that have closed in the past year now that we’ve run out of playing fields to flog off to housebuilders.
“No, it’s about regeneration. There is always the chance that winning the bid will be the catalyst for turning the Lea Valley into another Barcelona. It would be hard to imagine any development making it worse. If we can get wonderful new roads and Tube lines and houses, oh, and sporting facilities, surely it must be a good thing.
“I thought the Olympics began to lose its gravitas when someone invented synchronised swimming, but surely even that would be worth watching in a pool designed by) Zaha Hadid. It’s not as though the country is short of designers. The problem will be the PFI virus that subsumes design responsibility. What the Olympic Solomon should do is divvy up the projects among architectural practices of the right size.”