Games stadium may become new Acropolis
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-12 13:01

In the baking midday sun two days before its Friday opening night, the 72,000-seat Athens Olympics stadium looked more like an empty stage set than the modern-day Acropolis that enthusiasts predict it will become.

The seats are empty, a few birds hop about, a couple of cleaning women with mops tart up the ground level while giant pieces of sculpture lie like mysterious Easter Island artefacts on the covered stadium field.

They are waiting to be used in the spectacular opening night ceremony that will trade heavily on images of ancient Greece's gods and goddesses.

For some unexplained reason, Italian-American Dean Martin's voice is belting out "That's Amore" on the loudspeakers outside the stadium.

But that sort of internationalism perfectly fits Spaniard Santiago Calatrava's radical redesign of a stadium originally completed in 1982.

Calatrava's reinvention is capped by a new swirling, swooping roof that has been compared to wings, double bow strings and even a mollusk.

One American newspaper predicted the curved shell structure "will leave more people breathless than Athens fog."

The building is the signature motif of the 28th Olympics, inspired no doubt by similar buildings that have dominated the international architecture scene for years, breathing new life into cities searching to reestablish themselves in the minds of tourists and investors.

Two Examples

Think of Frank Gehry's shiplike Disney Hall in Los Angeles or his Guggenheim Museum in Barcelona as just two examples of the trend.

Many an Olympics these days, whether it be Tokyo or Sydney, has thrown up buildings aimed at getting on the international map.

The slow pace of the stadium's roof construction came to symbolise the turmoil and procrastination of Athens's effort to host its first Games since 1896.

All of Athens and the world wanted to know if the Greeks could get the roof up in time and many were happy to bet that it would not.

But a last minute spurt of energy got it installed even if the stadium's grounds still resemble a dust-covered building site and the cost for it and surrounding stadiums and venues skyrocketed to more than $300 million.

Some say that Calatrava might one day overshadow Gehry, who is now in his 70s.

But he is a controversial figure. His mast for the Barcelona Olympics was accused of looking a lot like a radiator ornament on a pre-war Cadillac.