The London Olympic Stadium 2012 has been designed with recycling in mind. 55,000 seats from London's 80,000-seat arena could be transported to Washington Park in the Illinois city and used to enlarge a planned, 7,500-capacity community arena into Chicago's main Olympic stadium. HOK Sport, architects of London's Olympic stadium, have deliberately designed the arena as a kit in part. A permanent concrete bowl of 25,000 seats will remain in place for athletics, lower league football and rugby, but every other component could be sold on.

 

With the world cup kick off within days, I start wondering about the hangover afterwards. All these stadiums will remain behind, including their ongoing running costs. Do we have the population & events to generate any kind of return on investment for the cities? Personally I think a great opportunity has been missed at the design stage of these stadia. Imagine that come the end of July we all drop off our flags at collection points to be turned into shade structures or windbreaks for township dwellers. Soccer City's panels get stripped and converted to house cladding. The steel stucture becomes a new theatre workshop...

Possibilites are endless, but unfortunately ended when the concrete footings went into the ground.