Zaha Hadid’s stingray-shaped London Aquatics Centre, Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing Bird’s Nest stadium, and Santiago Calatrava’s tautly strung Athens Olympic Sports Complex—the Olympic Games have a history of inspiring breathtaking architecture. For International Olympic Committee officials, however, scattered across a series of offices in Lausanne, Switzerland, the workplace hasn’t been quite so architecturally impressive.
That’s about to change with Olympic Unity House, a new IOC headquarters created by Copenhagen-based architecture firm 3XN. The dramatically swooping structure at the edge of Lake Geneva beat out competing proposals from more than 100 international firms, including Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and Diller Scofido + Renfro.
The winning design, which stretches out long and low with a green roof in a verdant park, has an undulating façade that is meant “to evoke the energy and movement of athletes,” said Jan Ammundsen, senior partner at 3XN. Inside, an open staircase formed by a series of staggered wood rings enlivens the space and “symbolically echoes the unifying aspirations of the Olympic rings.” Designed to be highly sustainable, the structure includes the use of lake water for building systems, photovoltaics for solar power, and optimized natural lighting. A firm completion date has yet to be announced, but the project is intended to support the IOC’s Olympic Agenda 2020, its strategic road map for the future.
