Skip to main content
Home / Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia, IASS 2016 Tokyo Symposium: Spatial Structures in the 21st Century – Historical Structures

Free Content Regional character in International construction: A case study for Olympic Architecture and Engineering

Download Article:

Authors: Brown, Laura A 1 ; Cresciani, Manuel 2 ; 

Source: Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia, IASS 2016 Tokyo Symposium: Spatial Structures in the 21st Century – Historical Structures, pp. 1-10(10)

Publisher: International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS)

As the size and scale of the summer Olympic Games proliferated over the 20th Century, there has arisen a dilemma, in representing regionalism, nationalism and globalism in Olympic architecture. This paper examines, how regional and international characteristics of design impact upon the resultant architectural legacies of the Games, scrutinizing how the language of design is conceptualized with global or local properties; to act as an iconic monument to the event, whilst contributing to the local community and connecting with the historic evolution of the city. Whilst it seems that some of the works examined in this article, in spite of their international success, managed to keep what can be defined as a ‘Regional character’, distinctive of a particular culture in terms of architectonic language and technological resources; this quality seems to be lost in recent editions of the Games and represents one of the challenges to the next Olympic Cities.

Keywords: Distinctiveness; Globalisation; Identity; Nervi Calatrava; Regional character; Summer Olympic Games

Document Type: Research Article

Affiliations: 1: Northumbria University Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, Email: [email protected] 2: Northumbria University, Department of Architecture and BE

Publication date: September 26, 2016

More about this publication?
  • The Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia include the articles presented at each symposium. They are grouped by thematic sessions. These limited-length conference papers are reviewed and selected by the Scientific or Technical Committee of each symposium, and generally only those actually presented orally at the conference are included. Although the metadata for the papers is available to the public, only members of the IASS can view the full papers, for which the author(s) hold the copyright. Further information about the projects or research should be sought from the author(s).
  • Membership Information
  • Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites

Share Content

  • Access Key
  • Free content
  • Partial Free content
  • New content
  • Open access content
  • Partial Open access content
  • Subscribed content
  • Partial Subscribed content
  • Free trial content