fter seven years of planning
and three years of construction, the
International Olympic Committee (IOC)
is finally unveiling its new 22,000 sq m
HQ in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 23 June.
Olympic House has been designed to
embody the movement’s lofty values, while
its undulating shape mimics the flips and
twists of a snowboarder.
Mention the IOC to most people, and the
Games are undoubtedly what first come to
mind. But the organisation is more than that,
says Marie Sallois, its director of corporate
development, brand and sustainability.
‘We are the governing body of the sports
movement,’ she explains; the non-profit
organisation gives an average of $3.4m a day
to athletes and sports-related causes around
the world, anything from gender equality
to infrastructure in refugee camps.
Lausanne has been the IOC’s home since
the beginning of the First World War, when
founder Pierre de Coubertin chose the city
for its neutrality. But with time, its employees
found themselves scattered in four separate
buildings around the city. In 2006, the
organisation started thinking about how
to regroup under one roof.
A new building would require what
Sallois calls five ‘key success factors’. It
needed spaces that encourage collaboration,
a flexible structure that could evolve with
changing work habits, and symbolism of what
the IOC stands for. Sustainability was also
vital; the IOC had to ‘walk the talk’ if it
expected the same of organising committees
and sports federations. Finally, the building
had to integrate into its environment,
a public park overlooking Lake Geneva.
In 2013, the IOC invited 12 international
architecture firms to submit proposals,
ultimately selecting Denmark’s 3XN, whose
overarching philosophy is that architecture
shapes behaviour. A few months before the
building’s inauguration, the firm’s founder,
Kim Herforth Nielsen, and senior partner
and head of design, Jan Ammundsen, gave
Wallpaper* a tour of the site in Lausanne.
‘Every part of this building has a meaning,’
says Nielsen, showing the stop-motion image
of a snowboarder that drove the dynamic
and undulating design. The clear glass façade
and load-bearing steel columns behind the
glazing allow for transparency and flexibility,
with open spaces and a minimum of
supporting structures inside; no columns
stand within 8m of the façade, so workspaces
can easily be modified at any time.
Nielsen shows a square being pushed in
on all sides to give an idea of how they arrived
at the concave shape, which serves several
purposes: reducing the building’s footprint,
allowing daylight to penetrate everywhere, »OLYMPIC HOUSE’S GLASS
FAÇADE AND LOAD-BEARING
STEEL COLUMNS ALLOW
FOR TRANSPARENCY AND
FLEXIBILITY, WITH OPEN
SPACES AND A MINIMUM OF
SUPPORTING STRUCTURES
INSIDE. THE UNDULATING
DESIGN IS A NOD
TO SNOWBOARDINGA
Architecture