- Olympic venues are known for waste, with photos of abandoned venues going viral from time to time.
- This year's Beijing Winter Olympics showcased more climate-friendly urban design, like Big Air Shougang.
Every four years, an international city gets two weeks to shine as it sheds billions of dollars and acres of land to erect grand, brand-new venues for a global troupe of eager athletes. As this year's Winter Games host, Beijing became the first city ever to host both a winter and a summer Olympics.
This became an opportunity for China's capital — both out of eco-consciousness and out of necessity — to showcase more climate-friendly urban design. It also hints at what our future could look like.
This year, several of the Olympic venues were repurposed from existing buildings rather than built from scratch. The Beijing Winter Olympics opened at the same Bird's Nest venue that ushered in the 2008 Summer Olympics, while another venue, the Big Air Shougang ramp for the big-air events, received mixed reactions from athletes and viewers around the world.
At first glance, in West Beijing felt like an unlikely location for a ski jump that's typically placed among snow-capped mountains. Instead, a ramp 61 meters high and 164 meters long was constructed on what used to be a steel mill. Remnants of the industrial site punctured the background as skiers launched into the air amid gray smokestacks.
Some viewers called it dystopian, but the industrial background was the whole point. The industrial marks, now repurposed for non-industrial use, represented the city's history. In addition to Big Air Shougang, two coal workshops were also transformed for figure skating, short track speed skating, curling, and ice hockey.
The Olympics and the future of urban design
This repurposing of old industrial powerhouses invites the question of the future of sustainable urban design. The Economist journalist Simon Rabinovitch tweeted: "To see the Shougang steel mill, once Beijing's biggest source of pollution, transformed into a sports park without erasing its industrial heritage is actually pretty awesome."
Councilor HY William Chan, a Sydney architect and city-maker who has worked on previous Olympic venue and design teams, defines heritage in the context of architecture as a lived experience.
"Heritage isn't about putting architecture behind glass," Chan told Insider. "Heritage is preserved when it's used by later generations. A lot of the histories we enjoy are lived histories."
American freestyle skier Alex Hall spoke on Big Air Shougang's post-industrial aesthetic as well, telling the Associated Press: "The crazy smokestack things in the back are pretty cool … You get to see some of the mountains in the background, you got this temple here, the city's that way."
Of course, climate change hasn't been resolved with a simple restructuring of a post-industrial steel mill. One repurposed steel mill doesn't mean steel production has halted; others are still operating in different parts of the country.
Additionally, while the Beijing Organizing Committee presents Big Air Shougang as a mark of sustainable redevelopment, the artificial snow it generated for the Games required significant amounts of water and electricity. (Marie Sallois, the International Olympic Committee's director for sustainability, told Insider that Beijing used ice refrigerants to make the artificial snow, which are "much more climate friendly than other ice-making methods.")
A step in the right direction for urban planning
While Beijing — and the rest of the world — has a long way to go, Sallois was happily surprised at Beijing's initial proposal to rebuild Shougang Industrial Park.
"It met two key objectives [for the International Olympic Committee]," she told Insider. "It allowed the Games to act as a catalyst for sustainability in the host city, and the organizers maximized existing venues, only building when absolutely necessary."
Chan similarly emphasized the importance of social sustainability in urban planning, saying it's just as important to build spaces that respect people's livelihood, livability, and wellbeing as it is to build green, carbon-neutral spaces. This also ensures that the space will have flexible uses accommodating a growing urban population.
But what truly makes a building "sustainable"? Chan raised the issue of a building project's carbon footprint.
"When we are talking about refurbishments and changes to adapt to these short-term localized events or long-term aspirations, everything needs to be designed from the get-go of the project to have that flexibility in mind," Chan said.
This means looking at embodied carbon: the building material, the energy spent on extracting and transporting it, and then the construction itself. It's critical to look at the carbon footprint in order to truly be less carbon intensive with building transformations, even if it's branded as a "reuse and recycle" project.
Fighting the history of abandoned Olympic venues
Chan cautioned against the lofty dreams of Olympic venues, especially given their history of abandonment.
"We have to be careful about the example of Shougang, because what happens to that venue now?" Chan said. "Architecture should last multiple lifetimes." The fleeting life cycle of buildings has become a problem throughout modern cities due to what he termed a new culture of "disposable architecture," or buildings created for a single use — like an Olympic event.
The Sustainability team at the International Olympic Committee is aware of the critiques against its abandoned venues. In recent years, the Committee has required all host cities to propose legacy uses for their venues — and Beijing is no exception.
Big Air Shougang has been constructed with the intention of a lifetime beyond the Olympics, becoming the first permanent big air venue in Olympic history. Sallois explained that the previously underutilized and underdeveloped park will serve as a recreational sports area for locals to enjoy snow sports and other activities. Sallois hopes that Shougang "will bring a trend of great urban neighborhoods."
The Olympic Committee hopes to change its less-than-sustainable reputation — including building fewer brand-new venues
Sallois told Insider that in Paris, the 2024 Summer Games host, only 5% of the venues will be newly built — including the Olympic stage and the aquatic center. The city will also be rebuilding an underdeveloped neighborhood much like Shougang to help enhance the urban environment for the local community.
Milan, host of the 2026 Winter Games, similarly "will rely on 93% of existing infrastructures, either renovated or upgraded," Sallois said, and Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Games, will have an "even more radical reuse approach, because no new venue will be built." (This would mark the LA Coliseum's third Olympics Games.)
Big Air Shougang suggests the potential some underutilized urban spaces have for a sustainable "retrofitting" providing several flexible and long-term uses for an evolving local community. In the context of sustainable urban planning projects, Chan underscored the significance of "adaptive reuse," a concept that establishes that "any building needs to cater to evolution and flexibility as the people and uses evolve."
Industrial sites marred by time and world events are physical reminders of how our civilizations have developed, but they're also reminders of how we've lagged behind. But the history that lies in buildings is a critical piece of urban heritage that tells a story of how we got here and where we can go. We can't undo the rapid industrialization that's already occurred, but we can certainly rewrite our future — even if that means building on top of it.