Main Stadium

The global design practice Populous is delighted to announce today that it has been selected by the State Corporation ‘Olympstroy’ to design the main stadium for the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

Populous has also designed the master plan and overlay plan for competition and non-competition venues and facilities, and now adds designing the main 40,000 seat stadium to their expanding role on the 2014 Games. Populous is joined in the design consortium by Russian contractor Engeocom, and Botta Management.

“The main stadium design, in addition to the venue overlay plan we have prepared for the 2014 Games, delivers a wonderful vision for the winter Olympics, and a lasting sustainable legacy for Sochi. Its sweeping form responds to both its coastal location and mountainous backdrop, whilst its crystalline skin engages with its surroundings by day, and provides an iconic representation of the colour and spectacle of the games when illuminated at night. We are proud to be involved on such a level with Olympstroy,” said John Barrow, Populous senior principal.

This is the 25th year of Populous’ involvement in Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we are now the first design practice to have been officially appointed for the design of two Olympic Stadiums at one time. With Populous being the architects responsible for the main Stadium and venues overlay for the London 2012 Games, designing for Sochi 2014 ensures the continuation of the practice’s unrivalled experience in Olympic event planning and venue design. Each of these stadiums reflects new standards for Olympic sustainability initiatives.

Source: populous.com

A project of the central Olympic stadium – stadium where opening and closing ceremonies will take place, as well as many medal ceremonies – has been finally selected few days ago. The winner of the tender is a group of companies which includes «Mosproject-4», Russia (architecture design), Populous, USA (architecture design), Botta Management Group, Switzerland (construction management), «ENGEOCOM Association» CJSC, Russia (construction).

The stadium must be completed by the end of first quarter of year 2013. After the Olympics it will be used to host football games and comply with all FIFA regulations.

Below are a few renderings from icube.ru which list «Mosproject-4» as a client, so, I guess, we’re looking at what future stadium will look like.

More renderings: Read the rest of this entry »

Olympstroy, state corporation responsible for coordination of the Olympic construction in Sochi, could not attract investors for some of the Olympic venues. The tender’s deadline was August 8, but there were no proposals for four projects, including the ice arenas.

The Olympstroys’ tender projects are tandems of Olympic venue plus hotel(s). Lenta.ru quoting Pokrov Invetment Group’s President saying that pay-off period for hotels can be from eighth years and more, while for the sports venues from 12 years to never. By his calculations sport venue + hotel tandem could take more than 20 years to pay-off.

Meanwhile, officials are not surprised about the outcome. The press secretary of the Ministry of Regional Development said that ice arenas in many countries are not paying off and are built on governments’ funds. However, the administration had to try to find private funds for these venues.

Now there will be separate tenders for the hotels, while Olympstroy will finance the venue constructions, and run separate tenders for prime contractors for the venues construction.

Information from Lenta.ru and Kommersant.ru

Own a business or have money to invest? You can help Sochi to get things done on time! :)

There are two places I know where you can find information about Olympics-related tenders. One is the official website of the Sochi Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, and the other one is the website of the state corporation “Olympstroy”.

And these are not only tenders for construction of the Olympic venues for the Sochi Olympic Games, but also for smaller stuff, like supplying construction equipment, autos, office supplies and equipment, providing services like financial audits and technical expertise for various events, etc.

The trick with the Organizing Committee for OG is to monitor both Russian- and English-language versions of the websites. French-language version of the website doesn’t have any information on official tenders. Most tenders are published in the Russian section (of course in Russian language), and fewer are on English (in English). Looks like it depends on the tender where each one goes. Right now there are five open tenders in the Russian section.

The Russian section also lists several high-level open vacancies open in the Organizing Committee. I assume this means that the candidate has to be fluent in Russian. The English section’s “vacancies” section is empty for now.

Sochi Olympic tenders from the Sochi Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games:
– Russian language
– English language

The state corporation “Olympstroy” opened redesigned website about a week ago, and also lists all tenders there Read the rest of this entry »

* Sochi mayor Viktor Kolodyazhny resigns to become head of «Olympstroy» corporation owned by state which will control all Olympic related construction in Sochi, and, of course, the money flow. You can read more on this in The Moscow Times. The acting mayor for now will be Vladimir Afanasenkov — Vice Governor of Krasnodarsky Krai. He too was previously involved in Sochi’s Olympic bid.

* Russia launches Olympic brand protection campaign:

“Sochi 2014 Organising Committee and Russian authorities today began the first ever mass intellectual property protection campaign to safeguard the Olympic brand in Russia.