The Basketball Arena for the 2012 Summer Olympics and the

2012 Summer Paralympics The 2012 Summer Paralympics, branded as the London 2012 Paralympic Games, were an international multi-sport parasports event held from 29 August to 9 September 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. They were the 14th Summer Paralympic Gam ...

was located in the

Olympic Park An Olympic Park is a sports campus for hosting the Olympic Games. Typically it contains the Olympic Stadium and the International Broadcast Centre. It may also contain the Olympic Village or some of the other sports venues, such as the aquatics ...

in Stratford, London. The arena was designed to be fully recyclable, and was dismantled in January 2013, the seating was sold to Barnet owner Tony Kleanthous to be used in the construction of

The Hive Stadium The Hive Stadium is a stadium in Canons Park, North London, on the former site of the Prince Edward Playing Fields in the London Borough of Harrow. The stadium is home to National League football club Barnet, London Bees of the FA Women's Cha ...

History

London's Olympic bid proposed that there would be four arenas in the Olympic Park, but the revised masterplan published in 2006 reduced this to three, with the

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

matches being moved to

Earls Court Exhibition Centre Earls Court Exhibition Centre was a major international exhibition and events venue just west of central London. At its peak it is said to have generated a £2 billion turnover for the economy. It replaced exhibition and entertainment grounds, ...

. The

fencing Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, ...

arena was also cancelled, and the fencing took place at

ExCeL ExCeL London (an abbreviation for Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibition centre, international convention centre and former hospital in the Custom House area of Newham, East London. It is situated on a site on the northern quay of the ...

The Basketball Arena had 12,000 seats for Olympic basketball and the semi-finals and finals of Olympic handball, and 10,000 for

Paralympic The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

wheelchair basketball Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people with varying physical disabilities that disqualify them from playing a non-disabled sport. These include spina bifida, birth defects, cerebral palsy, paralysis due to accident, amputations (of ...

and

wheelchair rugby Wheelchair rugby (originally murderball, and known as quad rugby in the United States) is a team sport for athletes with a disability. It is practised in over twenty-five countries around the world and is a summer Paralympic sport. The US na ...

. The arena was also used as a holding area for athletes during the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the games. Concept designs by Wilkinson Eyre Architects & KSS Design Group were agreed in June 2008 and a planning application was submitted in November 2008. It was a temporary venue, and the largest built for any Olympic games. The possibility of subsequently deconstructing the arena and transporting it to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

for the 2016 Summer Olympics was discussed, though the plan was shelved due to doubts from some Brazilian officials about its feasibility. In early October 2008 it was speculated that

Wembley Arena Wembley Arena (originally the Empire Pool, now known as OVO Arena Wembley for sponsorship reasons) is an indoor arena next to Wembley Stadium in Wembley, London, England, used for music, comedy, family entertainment and sport. The 12,500-s ...

could be used as a replacement venue for the preliminary rounds of the 2012 Olympic basketball tournament instead of the Basketball Arena, thus saving up to £90 million, but in March 2009 it was confirmed that a new arena would be built in Stratford as originally proposed. In late October 2009, preparatory work had begun on the site and Paisley-based Barr Construction would begin building the main arena in spring 2010. The basketball arena took 15 months to build and was completed in June 2011. Sustainability was an important concern. The arena was made out of sturdy individual components that could be easily dismantled and sub-divided for reuse elsewhere, with over two-thirds of the materials and components to be recyclable. The test event for the arena was the

London International Basketball Invitational The London International Basketball Invitational was a men's basketball competition. It took place at the Basketball Arena in London and was the first event to take place in the Olympic Park. The event was part of the London Prepares series and w ...

competition, which took place between 16 and 21 August 2011. For the test event, the venue had a capacity of 3,000.

Construction

Instead of using a concrete sub-structure, a lightweight

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...

was used, with cladding. This meant the building (frame and cladding) was constructed in six weeks. The venue, a 30-metre-high rectangular volume (the equivalent of a seven-storey building) was made out of a steel portal frame and wrapped in 20,000 square metres of lightweight

phthalate Phthalates (, ), or phthalate esters, are esters of phthalic acid. They are mainly used as plasticizers, i.e., substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity. They are used primarily to soften ...

-free and recyclable PVC plastic. This translucent bespoke cladding was then stretched across the steel framing modules that pushed the fabric out and created the three-dimensional undulating pattern along the sides. An interwoven blackout layer was used in the roof fabric, this reduced most of the daylight during game sessions and maintained a fully controllable artificial lighting for use by the media and game spectators. The external fabric walls were

translucent In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without appreciable scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale (one in which the dimensions ...

, allowing daylight to pass through during the day and artificial lighting to be visible during the evening. The architects worked with

United Visual Artists United Visual Artists (UVA) is a London-based art practice founded in 2003 by British artist Matt Clark (b.1974). UVA's diverse body of work integrates new technologies with traditional media such as painting, sculpture, performance, and site-sp ...

(specialists in concert lighting and installations) to create lighting and colour-changing effects for the evening games. The result was a dynamic illumination which, at night, transforms the white surface into a variety of saturated colours and strong silhouettes of the steel frame, creating the biggest light installation on the Olympic park. The arena was constructed with materials that could be recycled efficiently. The arena was officially put up for sale on 20 January 2013 by

GL events GL events is a French entertainment and medium enterprise founded in 1978, under the name of Polygones Services, by Olivier Ginon and three of his friends, Olivier Roux, Gilles Gouédard-Comte and Jacques Danger. It has been listed on the Paris ...

Slick Seating. An agreement was made with Tony Kleanthous and Barnet that the seating used in the arena would be coloured orange and black, so that Barnet could purchase the seating after the venue was dismantled and use it in the construction of their new ground, The Hive.

References

External links

London 2012 Olympics profile
{{Indoor arenas UK Venues of the 2012 Summer Olympics Basketball venues in England Indoor arenas in London Olympic basketball venues Olympic handball venues Sports venues completed in 2011 Sports venues demolished in 2013 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park 2012 Summer Paralympic venues Defunct indoor arenas in the United Kingdom Handball venues in the United Kingdom 2011 establishments in England 2013 disestablishments in England