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The Olympics
ArchMedium is currently hosting a competition that calls for the design of an Olympics museum in Athens, Greece . I knew about the competition that ArchMedium is currently sponsoring for sometime now. I competed in the previous ArchMedium hosted competition with a team of fellow architecture majors. Together we placed as a finalists.
My interests in ArchMedium’s current competition has a lot to do with the fact that I think there is a huge opportunity to make an impactful statement with a design. The site is in Athens, Greece (a country who’s economy just plummeted). With that in mind, the implications of such a project is huge. This is not an Olympic stadium or village, however as a museum we can expect that it makes all efforts to reference the Olympics and what the Olympics imply. Look at the history of the Olympics and what they do to cities in terms of serving as an impetus for a surge of rapid urban development and infrastructural improvements. Clearly, the sporting event, which was to some degree founded on the idea of remaining apolitical, is quite the political feat. As a statement, I hope to create a design exploits the Olympics for the political device that it really is.
Not only has the Olympics been for many cities, and nations, the justification for immense amounts of money spent on infrastructural improvements and new constructions, the modern Olympics embodies universal memories of culture clash. Every 4 years or so, when I sit in front of a television to watch the Olympics, I am only thinking about the ethnie competitions that are soon to unfold.
In recent years the Olympic Games have become visibly more and more political. Once reserved for apolitical, non-violent competition between nations, The Olympics has now become far more political and far more violent. The examples of nationalism, racism, and ethnically-motivated culture conflict are plentiful.
