Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic Stadium to be Downsized

The Japan Sports Council (JSC) have announced that they will be reducing the size of the 2020 Olympic stadium by one-quarter to just 220,000 square meters.

The stadium that was designed by London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid had been receiving a barrage of complaints from architects, environmentalists and residents for it to be scaled down.

The announcement that the stadium will be reduced will also cut on the construction costs by 180 billion yen ($1.8 billion), a far cry from the original 300 billion yen for the bigger venue, estimated by the Japanese media.

There has been no official word yet on how much will be the revised cost estimate. The JSC official however emphasized that they will still be using the Hadid design and that the height estimate, which is currently at 70 meters. The JSC also said that the reduced size will still meet the requirements of the International Olympic Committee, which includes seating for 80,000 people, a retractable roof and movable seats that can be adjusted to different sporting events.

“While we are still using Zaha Hadid’s design, we now plan to downsize it,” a JSC official told an expert panel which approved the new blueprint.

“We made this plan after taking into consideration opinions” expressed by architect Fumihiko Maki and other high-profile critics, JSC president Ichiro Kono told reporters.

Maki is an award-winning architect responsible for one of the new towers for the World Trade Center complex in New York. He also renovated a building near the site of the new stadium.

The yet-to-be-built complex will replace the existing 54,000-seat stadium that was used during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.