Athletes’ villages from the Summer Olympics. Top: Mexico City, 1968. [Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games] Middle: Seoul, 1988. [Photo by Kyu Sung Woo Architects Inc.] Bottom: Athens, 2004. [Photo by Takis Gavrilis & Partners]
Since the inception of the modern Olympics in 1896, host governments have used the games to make a statement about their cities’ place in the world. Hitler turned the 1936 Berlin Olympics into a platform for Nazi propaganda, and the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, in Moscow and Los Angeles, were proxy sites for the Cold War. In recent decades, mayors have touted global sporting events as a form of urban development: a way of strengthening local industries, enlarging the tax base and subsidizing investment in public infrastructure. While signature stadiums like Beijing’s Bird’s Nest (Herzog & de Meuron, 2008) and London’s Olympic Stadium (Populous, 2012) grab the headlines, the urban form of the Olympic Village is often overlooked.
In the early Olympiads, there was no need for official athlete housing. Only 241 competitors took part in the 1896 Athens ceremonies — a far cry from the 17,000 expected in London this summer. At the 1928 Amsterdam games, athletes were accommodated in spare rooms in boarding houses and aboard ships. The first Olympic Village was built in 1932, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it was dismantled after the games and virtually no trace survives today. Not until the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki did host cities began to plan and develop permanent structures for housing athletes. Typically, the buildings were converted to private residences after the games were over, although some became public housing. The mid-century villages are still recognizable, even as their urban contexts have undergone dramatic transformations.
A turning point in the arc of Olympic planning efforts came in 1992 in Barcelona. The city’s strategy of using the games to catalyze urban development projects provided such a spectacular return on investment that every host city since has attempted to replicate it, with mixed results. Boosterism often drowns out the concerns of social justice activists who say Olympic funding supports elite projects over the public good. In Barcelona, for example, the city council abandoned a promise to convert Olympic Village units to subsidized housing. 1 This year, as the Olympics return to London for a third time, Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to cash in: “From tourism to business, sport to investment, we are determined to maximize the benefits of 2012 for the whole country.” Exactly how this vision will pan out is uncertain, but that hasn’t slowed the elaborate redevelopment plans already underway for the 2016 games in the Barra da Tijuca district of Rio de Janeiro.
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Amsterdam, 1928
Early Olympians were housed wherever there was room. The nearly 3,000 athletes at the 1928 Amsterdam games were stashed in schools, hotels, boarding houses, private homes and ships. Pictured here is housing for American competitors and officials aboard the U.S.S. President Roosevelt.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Los Angeles, 1932
1931 was the hottest year on record in Los Angeles, so organizers decided to build a village for male athletes at Baldwin Hills, where temperatures were 10 degrees cooler than other potential sites. The village’s 300 acres were on loan from the heirs of the prominent businessman Lucky Baldwin, so the buildings had to be removed after the games.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Berlin, 1936
Three years after Hitler’s rise to power, Berlin hosted the games with pomp and circumstance. Shown above is the arrival parade of 300 American athletes at the Olympic Village. Below is the main hall, near the entrance of the village.
[Photos from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Berlin, 1936
Today the entire village complex lies abandoned and derelict, an example of the way in which Berlin’s past haunts its physical present.
[Photo by Cornelia Kopp]
London, 1948
After World War II, the Olympics returned to London, which had previously hosted the 1908 games. Athletes were housed in locations in and around the capital: the men in airforce camps in Uxbridge and West Drayton and ex-military barracks in Richmond Park, and the women in London schools. Although the games cost only £600,000 — a fraction of the 2012 London Olympics — they were every bit as controversial. Citizens left homeless by the war felt the government was misappropriating state funds in providing accommodations for visiting athletes without addressing the needs of its own population. Similar debates have marked this year’s games, which are estimated to cost upwards of £14.5 trillion.
[Photo by quiquemendizabal]
Helsinki, 1952
Beginning a trend that has carried to the present, Helsinki organizers built an athlete’s village that could be converted into apartments after the games were over. Located near Puu-Käpylä, the first Garden City in Finland, the Olympic Village apartments are still inhabited today.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Melbourne, 1956
The austere village in Heidelberg West was the first to be converted to public housing.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Rome, 1960
The 1500-building Olympic Village in Rome was designed by Luigi Moretti, at the height of his influence on the city’s urban plan.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Tokyo, 1964
Athletes were housed in buildings near the National Gymnasium designed by Kenzo Tange, on former army grounds that were converted to a public park in 1967.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Mexico City, 1968
The Miguel Hidalgo Olympic Village was built on the rural southern edge of Mexico City as a major development project that involved several government agencies. The cheery calm of this postcard image elides the memory of the violent suppression of student protests during the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. Lost, too, is the symbolic power of the Black Power salute that underscored that year’s events. Mexico City marked the beginning of nearly two decades of politically-charged Olympics. In accordance with the International Olympic Commission’s neutral stance, acknowledgement of these incidents is lacking in much of the formal documentation.
[Vintage postcard courtesy of Roxbury Community College Library]
Munich, 1972
At Building 31 of the Munich Olympic Village (shown below in 2007), the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took hostage and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, during the second week of the games. Officials temporarily suspended competition in honor of the victims. One of the few physical markers of the event is a small commemorative plaque on the bridge that spans the Olympic Park.
[Top photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games; bottom photo by ProhibitOnions]
Montreal, 1976
In the wake of the attacks at Munich, the 1976 organizers restricted access to the four 23-story pyramids of the Montreal Olympic Village. Visitors and journalists could mingle with athletes only in the adjacent International Centre and Park.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Moscow, 1980
Designed by Workshop 15 of the Mosproekt-1 Department, the 1980 Olympic Village was built in record time using prefabrication technology common to many residential buildings in Moscow at the time.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Los Angeles, 1984
This fragmented “village” was spread among various buildings on the USC, UCLA, and UCSB campuses, so the architects included design elements such as colorful tubes, which were intended to create a visual sense of connectivity.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Seoul, 1988
Kyu Sung Woo designed the Seoul Olympic Village, shown here in in its urban context (above) and in a close-up that reveals the striking formal arrangement (below).
[Photos by Kyu Sung Woo Architects Inc.]
Barcelona, 1992
The Barcelona organizers built an entire neighborhood around the Olympic Village, teaming with developers and city officials to redevelop a two-mile stretch along the coast with beaches, parks, open space and art. As gentrifying forces increased rents three-fold in the formerly industrial area, less than 100 of the more than 6000 residential units were made available to low-income citizens.
[Photo by Fracesc_2000]
Atlanta, 1996
The Atlanta games were financed almost entirely with private funds. The Olympic Village buildings are now dormitories at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
[Photo from Official Report of the Olympic Games]
Sydney, 2000
In contrast to the public housing built for the Melbourne games, the Olympic Village in Sydney was designed and sold as suburban townhomes and condominiums. Some athletes were housed in what later became garages.
[Photo from Mirvac Design]
Athens, 2004
Today the Athens Olympic Village is one of the largest social housing complexes in Greece.
[Photo from Takis Gavrilis & Partners]
Beijing, 2008
Apartments in the LEED gold-certified Beijing Olympic Village reportedly sold for over a million dollars.
[Photo by Tricia Wang]
London, 2012
For this year’s games, the Organizing Committee redeveloped a predominantly industrial area, the Lower Lea Valley, in east London. The new mixed-use district, Stratford, includes the Olympic Village complex, a shopping center and millions of square feet of commercial space.
[Photo from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games]
London, 2012
The area now known as Olympic Village East, photographed before redevelopment in 2005.
[Photo by diamond geezer]
London, 2012
Of the 2800 units in the Olympic Village, nearly half are slated to become public housing (with the remainder sold at market rate). Shown here is one of the many courtyard blocks. Officials hope the housing complex will anchor a vibrant district supported by new infrastructure such as transit and community facilities.
[Photo from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games]
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