What is the future of the Olympics?
The designer behind the London, Rio and Tokyo masterplans is preparing for a shake-up. Bill Hanway talks pressure, planning and how he is changing the game for LA 2028
There are few structures in the world that play host to a more intense spectrum of human emotions than sporting venues.
These are places where we flock to pin our hopes. To celebrate and commiserate. To laugh and cry, gasp and wince and shout and cheer with tens of thousands of other people with whom we share the planet.
When it comes to the power of social infrastructure, very little compares to the cohesive force of the places and spaces we gather to experience sport. And, with expectations and emotions around these venues running naturally high, so too is the pressure on those charged with delivering them – particularly when the heat gets turned up to Olympic level.
Just ask Bill Hanway. The world’s most prolific sports venue designer and masterplanner, he has three Olympics under his belt - London, Rio and Tokyo. The global social infrastructure and sports lead at consultant AECOM is now working on LA 2028 - set to be the first privately funded Games.
“You get used to it,” he smiles, reflecting on the extreme pressure of delivering large-scale regeneration projects to immovable deadlines on the most public and highly scrutinised of stages - often in the face of major, unforeseen market challenges. “I never look at a Games and think ‘oh, it’s going to be fine’,” he says. “But, because I can see the context of some of the problems in relation to solutions that were found in previous Games, it gives me a little more perspective. It’s that perspective that keeps me sane.”
As the 2024 Paris Olympics - the most sustainable yet - get underway this week, Hanway lifts the lid on what it takes to deliver a human-centred Olympic masterplan, shares his plans to “reset” the Games in the face of climate change and trepidation from would-be host cities and reveals the single biggest threat to a successful major sporting event.
Treasure or toll? The Olympic paradox
An Olympic Games is more than a sporting event. It is more than a venue delivery project. It is a hard-fought opportunity for the host city to regenerate and deliver a legacy to serve the local community. Revered if done well and chastised if not, getting the long-term impact right is one of the most important components of a successful, human-centred masterplan. And rightly so, says Hanway. With so much investment ploughed into hosting an Olympic Games - $11.1bn (£8.6bn) in the case of Rio 2016 – much of the financial and social return is tied up in the legacy.
“In some ways it is easy to deliver venues for the Games themselves because they drive so much emotion just by the virtue of their being complete,” he says. “One of my favourite things, after working on these projects for many, many years is to be able to walk in the public realm where the fans are and just watch them. To see them smiling and happy always hits me very hard emotionally after all that work. It’s incredibly rewarding. But a city goes through a lot to deliver a major sporting event and making sure that goodwill feeling carries on is a challenge.”
Of the Games Hanway has worked on, some have seen more legacy success than others. “If the legacy can create public open spaces, additional social infrastructure whether that’s schools, public transport or health facilities, that’s really how it becomes a benefit to the city,” he says. “That’s what makes it human-centric for the long-term.
“Each city has a different interpretation of that. With London, Queen Elizabeth Park was an iconic centre of the Games, now providing huge benefits, including health benefits, to the surrounding communities.
“In Rio we had a similar proposal in terms of legacy but we didn’t see anything happen for years because of the financial crash and economic challenges Brazil faced after the Games. But this year we are finally seeing those legacy plans come back into play. Sometimes it’s a matter of patience.”
What a difference four years make
This plays into a wider point. One that anyone with experience in large-scale development will understand all too well. When you are working on major projects spanning many years, you never know where you will be in the economic cycle of a city, country - or indeed the world – at the point of build and delivery. And, unlike most other major schemes, there is no option to halt works and ride out the storm with an Olympic masterplan. The deadline is the deadline - firmly, and very publicly, marked on the global calendar.
“The financial context is always important,” says Hanway. “With London, when we were designing the Games we hit 2008 and the global financial crisis. We bid the contract during that time, got the best prices and, because it was the biggest project going on in Europe at the time, we also got the best teams and things were delivered early. Then, right after the Games in 2012 we went into a boom cycle. So, all the commercial legacy aspects just took off.
“With Rio it was the opposite. When we bid the project, it was at the peak of Brazil’s economic resurgence so prices were high. Then they had their crash and had to try to save money after the contracts were already let. This created huge challenges.”
Those challenges were well-documented. Fears over completion times were still rife just two weeks out from the opening ceremony, local opposition was prevalent, the economy was nosediving and unforeseen hurdles including the Zika virus were throwing yet more spanners into the already complex works.
Hanway said at the time “There are always some ‘oh my god is this going to be OK?’ moments. And with Rio? Well. There have been so many challenges you do sometimes find yourself thinking ‘could this get any worse?’”
It did, by the way, when a windbreak panel broke loose and narrowly missed Rafael Nadal who was warming up in the venue at the time. “He sort of laughed that off,” winces Hanway. “You know, sometimes these things happen.”
Light-hearted anecdotes aside, after two difficult Games back-to-back - Rio and then Tokyo 2020 which suffered due to the pandemic – a stark light has been shone on the emotional and financial toll a Games can take if things don’t go to plan.
As questions are raised around the true value - and indeed the true cost - of being an Olympic host city, has the time come to shake things up?
California Dreaming
Hanway believes so. Currently in the throes of preparing for the 2028 Games in LA, he hopes the event will signal the start of a new approach to Olympic masterplanning.
A mould-breaker from the get go, the LA Games has had the added advantage of an extended lead-in time thanks to an unprecedented decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2017 to award the 2024 and 2028 Games concurrently.
Notably, the decision was made after multiple withdrawals left only Paris and LA in the running for the 2024 Games - yet more evidence that the process of delivering and hosting an Olympic Games is in need of an overhaul.
The approach is simple in theory. The LA Games will utilise a record number of existing and temporary facilities to build on Paris’s headline-grabbing commitment to sustainability and will be relying entirely on private funding to reduce the financial risk to the city itself.
A compelling model but one not without challenges. “There is additional pressure as a result of this being privately funded,” says Hanway. “It means we have no real backstop in terms of public sector funding. Everything has to be delivered efficiently with the total cost understood at any given time. That creates a different sort of tension, but a healthy one. And if we can deliver a privately funded Games then it resets how the Olympics could be perceived by other cities and countries.”
It does mean there are far tighter parameters within which to work, he concedes. Finite funding means that venues have been located far and wide from the shores of Santa Monica Beach up to the mountains overlooking the city. And while Hanway doesn’t shy away from the fact that this will result in a “very different feel” to the event than people are used to, it neatly honours his golden rule for delivering a human-centred Games. “The city shouldn’t have to change to host the Olympics,” he says. “The Olympics has to adapt to the city in which it is going to be played. In LA we will have a whole spectrum of backdrops and the way these Games are presented will be very different to what we have seen before.”
When it comes to climate credentials, the few and far between new builds pack quite a punch. The $2bn Intuit Dome, which will serve as the basketball venue during the Games before becoming the permanent home of the LA Clippers, is a prime example. LEED Platinum rated it will boast enough solar panels to run an entire event off batteries rather than having to draw from the grid.
But most of the Games’ strong sustainability credentials will stem from the same reason it is able to run on private funding alone; its planned use of existing buildings and temporary structures.
The flipside of this is that there won’t be much in the way of a physical legacy after the event. Does that matter when so much of a Games’ success is wrapped up in what it leaves behind? Hanway doesn’t think so. There is more to legacy than physical structures after all.
“The idea is to deliver a human legacy for Los Angeles,” he says. “$160m will go into youth sports and investing in access for all children in the city to the sports that they want to play.
“There will also be a legacy of training. As we start to do construction overlay, one of our main tasks is to make sure we are training local populations and communities to engage and understanding more about the construction work necessary to host major events. That’s valuable because LA does that all the time. So, it’s that type of legacy that is going to change Los Angeles.”
Will it be enough? Will LA 2028 stand up to the inevitable post-Games scrutiny and be remembered as one that delivered on its promises?
Managing expectations
That, says Hanway, will rest on what is promised in the first place.
One of the biggest threats to the success of a Games, he says, is overstating what can be done at the outset - “there must be a careful balance between the vision for the Games and what the reality of the delivery has to be.”
Overpromising, he adds, is to be avoided at all costs before pointing out that this is much less likely be an issue in relation to the LA Games given the private funding model.
That’s not to say there aren’t grand plans and lofty ambitions for the 2028 Games, adds Hanway. They are just firmly grounded by a healthy, openly communicated dose of fiscal responsibility.
And let’s be honest, not even the words fiscal and responsibility can dampen spirits when it comes to the immense power of an Olympics Games.
After all, there are few structures in the world that play host to a more intense spectrum of human emotions than sporting venues.
These are places where we flock to pin our hopes. To celebrate and commiserate. To laugh and cry, gasp and wince and shout and cheer with tens of thousands of other people with whom we share the planet.
And you can’t promise much more than that.
