The Master Plan
The venue designs provide unparalleled concepts for the Games and legacy applications for the future of Russian sport training and event programs. Eleven purpose built venues were included in the scope to meet the needs of the twenty-first century Olympic Movement and legacy for Russian sport development. The venue overlay plans demonstrate the most efficient use of venue space allocations, sensitivity to the environment and operational effectiveness meeting all of the International Olympic Committee and Federation standards.
Populous begins with a long-term legacy strategy in master planning as the starting point for creating vibrant and sustainable places within cities. They leverage sporting and entertainment venues as urban catalysts and develop the relationship between social infrastructure elements, and enhance them to add value and character to the urban realm.
This was for the first time that an Olympic Park has been designed as part of a Winter Games master plan. This unusual step guarantees a unique legacy for the Games, making Sochi a winter destination for decades to come and has reinstated Russia’s reputation as a viable host for major events. The infrastructure Populous has help create will regenerate the region, making Sochi out as a year-round tourist destination and new European winter sports center.
Fisht Olympic Stadium
The elaborate jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs that are a renowned Russian icon inspired the unique shell-like design of the Fisht Olympic Stadium. The venue features a translucent polycarbonate rood, which will be used to project vivid illumination shows during the Games, while also giving the venue an appearance of snowy peaks, ensuring it sits in harmony with the landscape of the Imeretinskaya Valley and Caucasus Mountains. Populous long with Buro Happold, created a roof structure and floor structure underneath the field of play to facilitate a range of staging options, including the suggestion for the ability for a dramatic flying arrangement for the culmination of the opening and closing ceremonies – namely a ‘flying’ cauldron emerging from the sea and coming to rest in the middle of the Olympic park.
The lower seating tier is designed to take on an extensive series of demountable structures including eight tunnels each nine meters wide and fully demountable northern section of the lower tier to enable a large-scale staging operation in that section of the seating bowl. Within the park, the main level of the stadium is raised on a landscaped mound, providing stunning views from within. The engineering systems will enable the in-built flexibility of the stadium’s design means its capacity can change over time to provide event configurations from 45,000 seats fro FIFA World Cup matches to a compact, atmospheric 25,000 for local matches.
Richelle Sibolboro 