Olympic Stadium in Tokyo Is Dogged by Controversy

Zaha Hadid Architects

The Olympic stadium designed by the Pritzker-winning architect Zaha Hadid, to be built here for the 2020 Summer Games, looks to some like a pleasingly sleek, contoured spaceship. But many others deplore it, with one prominent Japanese architect saying it reminded him of a turtle. Another likened the $1.37 billion building, already projected to be the most expensive Olympic stadium in recent history, to another kind of animal.

“Why do we need this white elephant?” said Fumihiko Maki, also a Pritzker winner. “Tokyo is not a zoo.”

For nearly a year, the criticism of the Hadid design has been full-throated — about 500 people took to the streets last summer to protest it as oversized and overpriced — while Ms. Hadid suggests her critics are only embarrassing themselves and that they resent the hiring of a non-Japanese architect. “They don’t want a foreigner to build in Tokyo for a national stadium,” said Ms. Hadid, an Iraqi-British architect, in an interview with Dezeen, a design magazine.......Continue Reading

> via New York Times