Lasting grandeur

Host City speaks to Dennis Pieprz, architect of Beijing’s Olympic Green and mastermind of the Sydney Olympic Park’s legacy

The architect at work
(Picture: James McCown, Sasaki Associates)

Every day during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, up to 500,000 people travelled to Sydney Olympic Park, where over half the sporting venues were located. Sydney Olympic Park included not just the stadium (with a capacity of 110,000 people at the time of the Games) but an athletic centre, aquatic centre and tennis, hockey and archery facilities.

Games-time park management
Planners knew years in advance that they faced special challenges in handling the crowds. The result was a grand, expansive Olympics site with huge, sweeping boulevards wide enough to handle vehicles, as well as masses of pedestrians moving in one-way streams.

Organisers had to ensure the safe and efficient movement of spectators, workforce, equipment, catering, vehicles and Olympic ‘family’ members to, from and between venues. So the State Government gave its Olympic Coordination Authority (OCA) extraordinary powers to own, plan and manage the site.

At Games time, organisers realised that unrestricted access to Sydney Olympic Park would result in available capacity being exceeded. There was also concern that ticketed spectators could not reach events in time, that trains would be overloaded and that there would be dangers to public safety.

To restrict crowd numbers, a free, dated pass was developed and promoted and distributed through sponsor newspapers. This allowed OCA to limit the numbers of people visiting Sydney Olympic Park while allowing people without Games event tickets to share the atmosphere.

Controlling the paparazzi
Media access also became an issue. Guidelines had to be developed to establish a clear framework for the activities of television and radio non rights-holders.

Games organisers realised that these news media needed to be used to communicate messages on issues such as transport. However, the entitlements of Olympic media rights-holders had to be protected.

Non-rights broadcasters protested that they should be able to film and record in what was known as the “Common Domain” but outside the venues. The OCA argued that it had the right to ensure the media did not interfere with crowd management and comfort. The issue was resolved when Sydney Games organisers and the IOC agreed to a pass system, with eight passes per day available for Australian non rights-holders and eight passes for international non rights-holders.

Crucial to the success of Sydney Olympic Park was the army of volunteers who assisted at the site. More than 500 skilled university students conducted interviews of would-be volunteers.

As a result, at Games time almost 50,000 volunteers directed traffic, acted as interpreters, drove official cars, manned information booths and provided medical care. They made Sydney Olympic Park a stunning success for the crowds of visitors.

The future starts here
But with the closing ceremony finished, the athletes gone, the crowds dispersed and the stadium in darkness, all Olympic host cities face the same question: what to do with the extensive – and expensive – Games sites.

Sydney was no different.

Dennis Pieprz, president of Sasaki and Associates, Boston-based architects, landscape architects and planners, knows all about that challenge.

It was Sasaki that won first prize in the international design competition to establish the master plan for Beijing’s Olympic Green. Sasaki’s design proposal sought an environmental ideal using myths and legends of ancient China linked to contemporary needs for sustainable development. Dennis Pieprz led that urban design effort.

And Sydney had turned to Sasaki – and Dennis Pieprz – after the 2000 Games, when Sydney’s Olympic Park needed a plan for the future. “We were contacted by the Sydney Olympic Park Authority,” says Pieprz. “They were keen to develop a long-term vision for the area, the Olympic area and of course we were very keen on that because one of the key aspects of our thinking in Beijing was: what is the long-term legacy of the Olympics?”

From squalor to splendour
He says he found the Sydney site spectacular – 640 hectares of former industrial wasteland, which had been transformed into a huge stage for the Olympics, with spacious boulevards designed to hold 500,000 people, parklands and key sporting venues including the main stadium.

A new rail line and rail station had been built at the site, which also included almost 500 hectares of parkland.

“When I went to Sydney I was absolutely amazed at the quality. Sydney Olympic Park was so well made and so beautifully designed and so comprehensive in its sustainability strategies and its transportation strategies.”

What had once been brickworks, abattoirs, an armaments depot and contaminated industrial land had become Sydney’s centrepiece in the ‘best Games ever’.

“I found all that very impressive but what was missing was a more 24-hour, 7-day week life that could capture that investment” Pieprz says.

In other words, the park was in danger of becoming that most common of Olympic beasts, the post-Games ‘white elephant’.

“I saw the challenge as, how do you take these great strengths, these great stadiums, these great parks, these open spaces and the investment in sports infrastructure, transportation and all that and inject new uses, new life, new activities to make it more dense and more active throughout the days and weekends.”

He says one of his main ideas was to integrate more housing and office space directly into the Olympic site and to urge planners to think about educational uses, with investment in facilities for sports medicine.

“We worked with the Australian architectural and planning firms in the way to develop a strategy and what I’d call a framework. I think it’s very important to distinguish between a kind of urban design strategy – which is what the place needed – and specific building design, which would involve many architects over a number of years.

“If you think of a framework of streets and development parcels and pedestrian connections and green linkages—all of those things become part of the framework that builds on the existing place.”

For Sydney Olympic Park the result is an evolving master plan. The site will eventually be home to almost 20,000 residents. Another 25,000 workers will commute to the Park daily.

Hotels and education facilities are part of the plan. And events remain a centrepiece, with 1800 events held at Sydney Olympic Park each year. One of them is the iconic Royal Easter Show, a three week agricultural fair which attracts a total of around one million people every year.

No white elephants
So far, the main stadium has managed to avoid the ‘white elephant’ tag by attracting strong corporate sponsorship. The stadium is home to Sydney’s major football fixtures.

Dennis Pieprz says Sydney Olympic Park has left the 2000 host city with a great legacy. “It adds some truly remarkable public spaces. The sports facilities obviously provide places for national, local and community uses. The investment in transit, the whole sustainability strategy for the area is a remarkable lesson for development in Australia and around the world.”

And Sydney, he says, just needs to have the patience to wait for the site to reach its full potential. “It’s only eight years old, that’s hardly anything in the life of an urban environment.”

He says the sheer scope of the Sydney project was a good lesson for Beijing and he was keen to explore what he calls ‘the monumental civic grandeur’ that is required for an Olympic environment.

“We wanted to make the Beijing Olympic Green very much about China and specifically Beijing. Although we looked at a lot of previous Olympics – the Barcelona strategy or Sydney – we definitely took our cues from Beijing, from Chinese culture.

“We’ve paid a lot of attention to how to integrate the Olympic site into the adjacent districts that developed previous to the announcement of the Olympics.

“We’ve tried to make a seamless set of connections between the adjacent districts, because in Beijing that area will become obviously a major attraction.”

Long-term enjoyment
While Dennis Pieprz is excited for China and Beijing and the Games experience the Chinese people are about to enjoy, he says the physical legacy of the Olympics is just as important.

“I think it will be a unique environment. The legacy of the Games will be a series of great public spaces, parks and public environments that the citizens can enjoy,” he says.