A Mega Event: Rio Olympics 2016
- ozasikselin
- Jan 2, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 22, 2021
This paper is about a contestable mega event that is 2016 Olympics that occurred in Rio de Janeiro. There are lots of controversies about this event. There are two opposing side of the impact on built environment of Rio Olympics 2016. One side thinks that we see a much better Rio after the Olympics by new facilities and improved transportation system, the opponents think that the infrastructure application that made for Rio Olympics did not solve any problems, moreover it cause more and bigger problems. I am going to begin with the definition and objectives of mega events. Then I will continue with the impact of mega events both on built environment and the local culture of the city. Afterwards we are going to examine the sustainability claim and transportation assertion. Later on, I am going to continue with the architecture seen in the Rio during Olympic games. Lastly, I will briefly tell my overall assessment about 2016 Olympics.
Mega events are large scale events such as Olympic games, art biennales, music festivals or expos that are characterized through their global significance and temporary presence. Mega events have power to transform the built environment and make contribution to the financial system of the city. Also, mega events provide a great opportunity to attract investors and real estate developers to invest business. Most of the cities see mega events as a tool to aggrandize global competitiveness. (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Independent from the context of the mega events, they serve an outstanding function: connecting cities and cultures. (Short,2012). The manifestation of Olympics is to promote healthy life style, improve life quality, respect to other cultures and religions to improve life on Earth. The Olympics that occur for 2 months. These 2 months is seen as a trial version of this lifestyle. (Bartosz Dendura,2019)
Mega events have a big role on transformation of the cities. Lots of cities use the opportunities of mega events as regenerating a new image. By this way cities promotes themselves to attract enterprisers to invest money and make contribution to the city. While constructing new facilities, the new urban approach may fail to incorporate with the authentic finger prints of the urban fabric. If the integration of existing urban surrounding and new buildings are not considered well and blended with harmony, this is likely to cause new and bigger problems. (A. Zimbalist, 2017). Olympic games are cultural events as much as they are sports events so neglecting both the impact of these events to local people and the relationship between authentic culture and the new cultural elements that visitors bring to the location is really dangerous. Rio Olympics could not succeed setting this relationship. For building new facilities they demolished lots of informal settlements that are called ‘favelas’ (Figure 1) and pushed them out of the Olympic area. Favelas are not just slum areas they are a key part of Brazilian culture.
Figure 1: Favelas in Rio de Janeiro
https://www.getyourguide.com.tr/activity/rio-de-janeiro-l9/rio-favela-walking-tour-t67596/?utm_force=0
When you arrive Rio and get off from the plane and set off from airport to the south of Rio, you pass a sprawling informal settlement called Mare. It is one of the most crowded shanty town in Rio. Before the Olympics, you can clearly see this slum area because the highway passes through the shanty town. But with the urban ‘renovation’ of the Olympics, they build a sound barrier wall to camouflage the scene of the real Rio. They used sound barrier for visual aims as inhibiting the view so it does not serve any function for auditory aims. The view that they want to block is the reality of the Rio and in this slum area people do not have sewage systems, housing rights or sanitary living conditions. People who live in this place have bigger problems than hearing the sound of cars that pass from the highway. According to my assumption, it is an urban ‘gloss over’ rather than an urban ‘renovation’. In these kinds of megaevents people try to make city look good but they miss a big point. People who visit the event is temporary, but the local people always stay.
Mega events always change the life local people. It can either be in a positive or negative way. When we look at the Rio Olympics, we see that living conditions of poor people became worse, and living conditions for middle and higher class has improved. For building new facilities lots of poor people are exposed to illegal displacement (Almeida & Bastos, 2016). In Brazil 80% of the population live in the cities and they reached this percentage in a short time so they could not handle this rapid change and we see lots of informal settlements today which is called favelas. These areas do not have a proper infrastructure so most of them cannot access basic resources properly. In Rio more than 22% of population in the city dwell in favelas (Nnamdi Elleh ,2016). For the Olympics in 2016, Rio government demolished lots of houses rather than increasing their life quality by providing them proper resources (Dendura,2019). Urban developers gentrified Olympic areas and pushed poor people out of this area. The most important gentrification project of Rio is transformation of the region called ‘Porto Maravilha’. Before the regeneration of this area, it was dark, obsolete and dangerous. (Figure2) After the gentrification, it became one of the highly visited tourist attraction of Rio. (Amaral, 2016) (Figure3). They also changed the transportation lines and block poor people from reaching the new and gentrified places. So, this area was taken from the poor people and given to people from middle- and high-income level.
Fig.2: Porto Maravilha before Olympics Fig3: Porto Maravilha after Olympics
http://www.portomaravilha.com.br/conteudo/canal_investidor/prospecto/prospecto-sem-marcas-de-revisao-4-termo-aditivo-8-1-14.pdf
Rio has really good claims on sustainability as an Olympic candidate. The motto of Rio Olympic games was “Green Games for Blue Planet” to gather attention to their sustainability claim. Their aim was to minimize negative impact of new facilities that are going to be constructed towards the environment, by projects with low-emission system, using renewable energy and resource-efficient materials. When we look at the reports, we cannot say that they reached their aim successfully (Bartosz Dendura,2019).
Despite they could not reach their aims on sustainability, they keep their promise about their transportation claim. One of the most important infrastructure innovations that is made for Rio Olympics is upgraded transportation. Because Olympics host lots of people from all around the world, they changed and added new transportation routes. The neighborhood called Barra which the main Olympic park takes place is connected with the city center by mass transit systems. Before the infrastructure applications this road takes 2 hours but today it is only 15 minutes through the subway and bus rapid transit systems. (Amaral,2016) By extending tram lines and adding new underground rail lines, they increase public transportation percentage from 18% to 50%. Above all, Rio has become the city which has longest bicycle route that is 400 km. (Dendura,2019)
When we look at the architecture that seen in Rio during Olympics is breathtaking. A rich architecture range sprawled all around the city. To promote global image developers hired ‘starchitects’ for building masterpieces. Olympic Park is designed by AECOM. It sits on a triangular site in Barra da Tijuca. (Figure 4) Instead of building brand new stadiums, they used existing ones left over from the 2007 Pan-American Games. They constructed seven new facilities, actually these facilities were planned as demolishing after the Olympic games and building 4 new schools. Unfortunately, this plan did not implement and these huge areas are left empty. On the waterfront lawn AECOM designed big screens to allow people follow the games from outside too. AECOM has designed the master plan with a sensitive approach. They did not design masterplan according to the Olympic games, they anticipate that these huge facilities are going to be empty, so they designed master plans for 2018 (Figure 5) and 2030 (Figure6) for the transformation of the space in longer term.
Fig.4: Site masterplan of Olympic Park – 2016
https://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/03/rio-2016-olympic-park-by-aecom/
Fig.5: Site masterplan of Olympic Park – 2018 Fig.6: Site masterplan -2030
https://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/03/rio-2016-olympic-park-by-aecom/
One of the most iconic building that is built for Olympic games is Calatrava’s ‘Museum of Tomorrow’. This building plays an important role on gentrification of Porto Maravilha. It is located on the coastline of Rio and discovers the relationship between nature and the city. The building includes permanent and temporary exhibition areas. It has an enormous overhang that is 75 meters. It is like a display of the connection between city life and nature through this large extension from dock to bay. The idea that Calatrava want to apply is, the image of a floating building. The lower levels of the building include museum store, restaurant, administration, lobby and educational facilities. The building has a sustainability claim which is applied in a successful way. The water of the bay is used for regulating the temperature. The water that is collected from the bay also used for the pools in the surrounding of the building. The building includes photovoltaic solar panels for generating solar energy provided for the building.
Nike opened a pop-up store for the Olympic games and they used shipping containers for it. Studio GTM Cenografia designed this store for Nike and they build a metallic structure that is formed by containers. They also hire a Brazilian artist Muti Randolph to make a digital installation on the cube. They used metal beams, corrugated metal sheets and vinyl plates to achieve an industrial feel. It took 3 months to design, 20 days to manufacture and 15 days to assembly all the pieces.
The Dancing Pavilion is a temporary piece of architecture that is build for the Rio Olympic Games. It is an interactive pavilion that responds by its kinetic façade by human interaction. There are scattered sensors on the dance floor that grabs the movement of people while dancing and activates the mirrors on the façade. (Figure 7) With the movement of mirrors, the pavilion creates an affect to people like they are dancing inside of a disco ball. Personally, I think it is the most exciting building which radiates vibrance to the environment.
Fig.7: Dancing Pavilion
https://archello.com/story/68283/attachments/photos-videos/2
Another pavilion that is built for Olympics is the Danish Pavilion by Henning Larsen. It is located on Ipanema Beach to celebrate Denmark's participation to Olympic games. The design is inspired from the Danish yachting traditions. It is a lightweight structure constructed by aluminum masts and clear acrylic.
Coca-Cola also build a pavilion for the Rio Olympics. Atelier Marko Brajovic designed a multisensorial experience for the visitors. Photogenic phenomenological gestures represent the freshness sense when you drink Cola. They placed five hundred translucent acrylic spheres that helps the light games and reflections. The pavilion hosts lots of events such as concerts, games and other brand activations.
Olympic Handball Arena is designed by Lopes Santos e Ferreira Gomes Arquitetos + OA. Like AECOM, this design studio also proposed the design that is adaptable to the future. This facility also planned to transform into a school. They designed an independent metallic structure to make building flexible for hosting events on various purposes. Recycled wood is used on façade of the building. It also helps filtering the light.
To conclude, Rio Olympics cause lots of controversies in years. From my perspective, developers and the government might do some improvement for Rio in specific cases but in overall they made decisions that are not sustainable and adaptable to the future. We face with A heart-breaking reality after the Olympics. All these big spaces are left empty and useless so it transformed into ghost town. They focused just on the image of the city and reputation of the Olympic games that they missed a big point. They just bind up beautification the image of the city that they are planning to create on visitors’ mind but they miss an important point that this event hence the visitors, are temporary but indigenous people are permanent. The formulation of development strategy for mega events should not be applying makeup and showing the world as a ‘shiny’ city to visitors and neglecting all the problems of locals. Blowing money onto temporary investments without using any resource for solving the problems of indigenous people is not an equitable approach.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Andrew Zimbalist (2017), Rio 2016: Olympic Myths, Hard Realities
· Nnamdi Elleh (2016), Reading the Architecture of the Underprivileged Classes
· Taylor & Francis (2016), Mega-Event Mobilities: A Critical Analysis
· Gulianotti & Klauser (2009), Security Governance and Sport Mega-events: Toward an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda
· Almeida & Bastos(2016), Displacement and gentrification in the 'city of exception': Rio de Janeiro towards the 2016 Olympic Games
· Bartosz Dendura (2019), Olympic Infrastructure—Global Problems of Local Communities on the Example of Rio 2016, PyeongChang 2018, and Krakow 2023
· Jonathan Watts (2016) ,Museum of Tomorrow: a captivating invitation to imagine a sustainable world
· Brian Mier (2016), Gentrifying Rio
· https://www.olympic.org/news/-a-much-better-rio-de-janeiro-after-the-olympic-games