To the founders of the Modern Olympic games, “town planning projects” were part of the Romantic view of architecture, not plans dividing land uses and transport links and showing the location of housing for the masses 

I first came across this story when teaching at RMIT in the 90s and have always wanted to explore it further. Now, as we nervously anticipate the 2020 Olympic games, but being held in 2021, in mostly empty stadiums, it may be a good time to revisit the first disrupted decades of the games. (The 1908 Olympic Games, were relocated to London from Rome due to the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906, and the 1916, 1940 and 1944 games were cancelled because of World Wars 1 and 2).

In the RMIT library there were two books describing the competition and showing some of the winning entries – the park and stadium in Liverpool UK, I think, which won a gold medal in 1928. Sadly, I couldn’t get hold of these books (if they’re still there) because of a rapidly spreading and deadly virus that has popped up in our very own famous stadium, so this article is based on internet research of the Olympic games held between 1912 and 1948.

The Art Competitions

The Modern Olympic games started as the pet project of a 31 year old French Baron, Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern games in Athens in 1896. (Incidentally but significantly, he thought the games should be exclusively for men. Apparently he started to rethink this after the 1900 games). 

The Ancient Olympics had included competitions for music, singing and public speaking and de Coubertin had always intended that they be included in the modern games, writing in 1906,  “In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again.”

The first games to include the five creative arts categories of:  architecture, painting, sculpture, literature and music were the Stockholm games in 1912. Architecture was defined as “Town Planning Projects”. In the 1928 Amsterdam games the original five categories were further subdivided and under “Architecture’, there were now both Town Planning Projects and Architecture awards. All entries in all art categories were required to draw links between art and sport. The architecture competition allowed both already built work and speculative designs to enter as well as designs for town planning.[1]  As with the sporting events, the competitions were only open to amateurs. [2]

The medal winners

Gold, silver and bronze medals weren’t awarded in every arts category at every Olympics. The organisers of the Stockholm games in 1912 were annoyed that they suddenly had to add an arts competition and only made a half-hearted effort to stage the full event. There were only 35 entries across the six categories.  (In the same year there were lots more entries in the competition to design Canberra).

The following table lists the Town Planning Projects medals and the winning projects. Monod and Laverriere of Switzerland won the first Olympic gold medal in Town Planning Projects for their ‘Building Plan of a Modern Stadium,’ and the other winning projects are similar.  There were some cunning submissions like the “Town Plan for Koln with Stadium” in the town planning category and several parks with a variety of uses, like Marine Park Brooklyn. However, with the exception of the Reich Stadium, the only design I’ve been able to find, it is difficult to tell how many of the projects for gymnastic schools, athletic centres, stadiums or sports and recreation centres included a public park or other buildings. This may have tipped them into a modern understanding of landscape architecture or town planning.

The record of Architecture medals from 1928 onwards lists some of the same or very similar projects. Jacques Lambert entered both competitions in 1928 and won the silver medal for town planning and the bronze medal for architecture with his plans for a stadium for Versailles. The Reich Stadium in Berlin won the gold medal for Town Planning Projects and the silver medal for Architecture in 1936, beaten by a design for a ski-jump.

[1] In 1924 (Paris), the Dutch architect Jan Wils won the Architecture gold medal for his Stadium in Amsterdam, which hosted many of the Olympic sports in 1928. The Reich Stadium, which won gold in 1936, had been commissioned and built for the Berlin games.

[2] Two presidents of the IOC have been entrants in the Olympic art competitions. In 1912 Pierre de Coubertin, under the pseudonym "Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach", entered ‘Ode to Sport’, which won the gold medal. Avery Brundage, who competed as an athlete at the 1912 Games, entered literary works at the 1932 and 1936 Olympics, earning an honorary mention in 1932. He was the IOC president from 1952 to 1972.