TOKYO: Japanese sports officials yesterday bowed to growing criticism that a massive stadium planned for the 2020 Olympics was too big and costly, saying they would shrink the building’s area.
The proposed stadium, designed by London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, is intended to occupy a spot in west Tokyo currently occupied by the national stadium, an area with numerous parks and a large Shinto shrine.
The new 70-metre (230-foot) architectural centrepiece -- a futuristic, bike-helmet-shaped stadium -- has drawn criticism that it would tower over other structures in the area, which are limited to a 15-metre height restriction, and would be visible all over the Japanese capital.
Yesterday the Japan Sport Council (JSC), which is in charge of running the current and future stadium, announced it would scale back the floor space by one-quarter to 220,000 square metres.
That would cut construction costs to about 180bn yen ($1.8 bn), Japanese media reported, well down from 300bn yen for the bigger building. Officials did not release a revised cost estimate.
“While we are still using Zaha Hadid’s design, we now plan to downsize it,” a JSC official told an expert panel which approved the new blueprint. The reportedly slimmed-down cost is still nearly 40 percent above the government’s initial estimates for a new stadium.AFP
