The Olympic City

[trebor204]

I came across a project called "The Olympic City" on Kickstarter

Right now they are looking for backers

Here is the link to the project:

http://www.kickstart...ty?ref=category

About this project

The Olympic City is a photography project by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit that looks at the legacy of the Olympic Games in former host cities around the world. Hosting the Olympics has become a way for a city to show itself off on an international stage and generate toursim dollars, and cities spend millions or billions for the privilege. But after the events are over, the medals have been handed out, and the torch is extinguished, what's next? What happens to a city after the Olympics are gone?

In The Olympic City, we're documenting the successes and failures, the forgotten remnants and ghosts of the Olympic spectacle. Some former Olympic sites are retrofitted and used in ways that belie their grand beginnings; turned into prisons, housing, malls, gyms, churches. Others sit unused for decades and become tragic time capsules, examples of misguided planning and broken promises of the benefits that the Games would bring. We're interested in these disparate ideas — decay and rebirth — and how each site seems to have gone one way or the other, either by choice or circumstance. We're equally interested in the lives of the people whose neighborhoods have been transformed by Olympic development.

[Lord David]

The only survivng structure specifically built for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne: The Westpac Centre.

[runningrings]

The Westpac Centre (previously the Lexus Centre, Olympic Glasshouse, etc..) is a seriously amazing building. The first? indoor Olympic aquatics venue?

[Lord David]

Correct! Aside from some editions, most cities from then on used indoor aquatics venues for Swimming.

[mattperiolat]

Fascinating idea. Just wish they had the time and ability to do a look at all the Olympic cities. Obviously, the cities from 1900 to probably 1924 or 1928 would probably have little of the original infrastructure left, but to see a history and analysis of all of them intrigues me greatly.

[Lord David]

The Olympic Pool (I'm not sure of it's use post 1956 Olympics until the mid 80's), became the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre after redevelopment (I'm rather surprised that this wasn't done earlier, say in the 60's (doing a cheaper alternative to the wealth of indoor arenas popping up in the USA)) to become Melbourne's premier sports and concert venue (only to be "superseded" by The National Tennis Centre (Rod Laver Arena) in 1989) and finally for good with Vodafone/Hisense Arena in 2000).

If indoor sports were more popular, or if Melbourne was made host to a major indoor sporting event in the 60's, 70's, we might have had Australia's first proper indoor arena far earlier than conceived.

During it's years as an indoor arena, it sat 7,200 and was home to the Melbourne Tigers Basketball team (before they moved to the much larger Vodafone Arena (10,500), only to be losing money there, unable to afford the venue and move to the smaller State Netball and Hockey Centre (3,000)). Now it's used as the training venue for the Collingwood Football Club (Australian Rules Football of the Australian Football League) and reception centre. It's known as The Westpac Centre, formerly Lexus Centre.

It's a shame that it may never return as an indoor venue. I know that it was part of Melbourne's 1996 bid, proposed to have hosted Handball preliminaries. It's not too hard to remove the gym equipment, balcony, scaffolding and 25 m pool, but i doubt that we'll see it in any capacity for another Melbourne Olympics other than a training/back of house facility.