London 2012 Water Polo Arena

The London 2012 Olympic Waterpolo Arena is the first ever bespoke waterpolo venue constructed for an Olympic Games, and has been designed to satisfy the unusual sightline requirements of this sport.

The 5000 seat venue is a temporary building and will be fully dismantled after the Games. The building has been designed to use components from the temporary construction industry wherever possible, so that when the building is disassembled after the Games most of the components will be fed straight back into the supply chain. This design philosophy extends from the seats and air handling units through to the primary structural trusses. Even the two swimming pools will be disassembled for re-use later.

Those elements that cannot be directly re-used have been designed to be recycled. Examples include the removable steel screw anchor piles and the buildings phthalate-free PVC cladding.

Buro Happold delivered Structural, Civil, Fire, Geotechnical and geo-contamination engineering, access consultancy, CDM.

• 5,000 seats
• Most build components are reusable

Related Disciplines

• Structural engineering
• Fire engineering