Airdate: London Olympic Stadium

Nat Geo presents a special which looks at the design and construction of the London Olympic Stadium, the world’s “first flatpack arena” designed by Australian architect Rod Sheard.

As the final sprint towards the 2012 London Olympic Games begins, National Geographic Channel reveals the inner workings of the game-changing venue at the centre of the English capital’s bid to secure the world’s highest profile sporting event.

London Olympic Stadium, premiering in Australia on National Geographic Channel Tuesday June 12 at 7:30pm AEST, lays bare the journey developers faced in bringing the ambitious and revolutionary, 80,000 seat stadium to life.

Rod Sheard, the Australian architect behind the design for London’s stadium, along with others around the world including Sydney’s ANZ Stadium, notes it fulfils the host city’s promise to deliver an eco-friendly Games.

“Athletics can’t normally justify the sort of scale of arena built for the Olympics. To make the Games greener and less wasteful, the concept developed into the world’s first Olympic stadium that’s been built to be taken apart afterwards,” said Mr Sheard.

“This is one of the most compact stadiums of its kind, and it’s designed to give spectators the most intimate, ringside view of the Games ever,” he added.

Resembling an upturned crown, the London Olympic Stadium is lighter and tighter than any previous Olympic stadium. By day the venue will host track and field events while, at night, it will become a dazzling stage for London’s opening and closing ceremonies.

To achieve the team’s design goal and meet the strict opening night deadline required the concurrent design and building of the stadium. While permits were being passed for future sections, the ground work was being laid for base construction. Putting the world’s most flexible sporting arena together however, proved more difficult than simply assembling a meccano set.

Faced with Britain’s coldest winter in 30 years, extreme engineering and a global financial crisis, developers met the harsh reality of their undertaking by changing tack several times during construction and scaling back plans for the stadium’s visually stunning wrap, originally designed as an animated screen.

Transforming derelict land – potentially concealing unexploded bombs from WWII – riddled with toxic waste into a fresh, vibrant site fit to host the world’s fastest track and field athletes also came at no small expense, with costs doubling over the project’s lifespan during uncertain economic times.

Tuesday June 12 at 7:30pm AEST.