Competition for the new New National Stadium in Tokyo
July-September
2012

The competition
for the New Tokyo National Stadium which began in July and ended in September 2012
asked for a proposal for the 2020 Olympic Games. We made a design whose
intention was to allow people to feel very close to the activity within, to the
athletes and football players, to the exciting atmosphere in which the
spectator is involved directly in the games. At the same time we also wanted to
design a space which was flexible, that could accommodate the wide range of
sports intended for this kind of building, by focusing specifically on
circulation that would make movement easy and fluid. In front of the large
stadium area there is a main public space that creates a new Festival Sport
Plaza, whose roof protects people from rain and provides shadow in the hot
summer months. The space was intended to be used for exterior and extraneous
events like concerts, oobon parties, political campaigns, small sporting
activities, fairs, and many others.

The main roof
of the stadium is characterized by a big circular 120m wide aperture that can
be kept open or closed when a light dome of steel and fabric is slid into place
on binaries. When open, the dome assimilated the Pantheon in Rome. The size of
the hole corresponds to the football field below and allows natural light to
penetrate and illuminate the grass field and running tracks. This atmosphere is
unique in the history of the games, as it will be a new and exciting space for
its involved spectators.

The circulation
allows for the people to access the roof via a ramp that circles around the
stadium and ends at the top, moving people onto the outdoor tracks, and covered
auditorium. For the first time in history, the roof may be used by people to
practice sports and watch the many different events that may be unfolding
bellow or under the roof's dome. The intention was to make the structure
capable of sustaining, within the limited plot of land, many of the activities
which in previous Olympics used to need multiple facilities.

For the first
time in the Stadium many different events can take place simultaneously in
different places: the main arena of 80,000 seats, the covered plaza in front,
the big roof with sport activities and a movable dome. It is not a fixed sport
stadium but a multiple activities complex. In case of football, the main arena
can be enlarged to 90,000 seats, by moving 5 meters down the football field and
extracting 10,000 additional seats.

The wooden
facade is reminiscent of ancient Japanese architecture, however it is also
intended to blend with the forest of columns that surround the structure and
hold up the roof, ramp and tracks. In essence, it is a structure of whose like
we have not seen before applied to the famous world athletic games.

PROJECT CREDITS

location
Tokyo, Japan

program
Olympic Stadium – 2020
Olympic Games

client
Japan Sports Council

competition dates
July – September 2012

architecture project
Andrea Maffei

design team
Takeshi Miura, Alessandra De Stefani, Takatoshi Oki, Roberto
Balduzzi, Paolo Evolvi, Stefano Bergagna, Pietro Bertozzi, Chiara Zandri /
Andrea Maffei Architects

associate architect
Hiroshi Yoshino,
Mitsuyoshi Miyazaki / Yoshino Hiroshi Architect Office

structures
prof. Massimo Majowiecki / Studio
Tecnico Majowiecki

mechanical
systems
Kankyo-Engineering
Co., Ltd.

total area
301.215 sqm

capacity
90.000 seats

cost estimation
US$
1,300,000,000