Architecture News

Know Your Winter Olympic Venues

By Lamar Anderson

<strong>Fisht Olympic Stadium</strong><br /><strong>Architect: Populous </strong><br />The Fisht Olympic Stadium, which will house the opening and closing ceremonies, features a shell-like polycarbona — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Fisht Olympic Stadium**
**Architect: Populous**
The Fisht Olympic Stadium, which will house the opening and closing ceremonies, features a shell-like polycarbonate roof mean to suggest mounds of snow or sails—and, inevitably, a Fabergé egg. Come 2018, the stadium will host the FIFA World Cup.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Bolshoy Ice Dome</strong><br /><strong>Architect: Mostovik</strong><br />Sochi’s cute symbolism is also at work in the village’s main ice hockey rink, which the architects capped w — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Bolshoy Ice Dome**
**Architect: Mostovik**
Sochi’s cute symbolism is also at work in the village’s main ice hockey rink, which the architects capped with a silvery dome whose shape is inspired by a frozen droplet of water. Thirty-eight thousand color-changing LEDs coat the roof in pulses of light.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Bolshoy Ice Dome</strong><br /> <strong>Architect: Mostovik</strong><br /> Sochi’s cute symbolism is at work in the village’s main ice hockey rink, which the architects capped wit — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Bolshoy Ice Dome**
**Architect: Mostovik**
Sochi’s cute symbolism is at work in the village’s main ice hockey rink, which the architects capped with a silvery dome whose shape is inspired by a frozen droplet of water. Thirty-eight thousand color-changing LEDs coat the roof in pulses of light.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Shayba Arena</strong><br /><strong>Architect: Central Research Institute for Industrial Buildings (CNIIPromzdaniy)</strong><br />As the smaller of the two hockey rinks—and the most liter — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Shayba Arena**
**Architect: Central Research Institute for Industrial Buildings (CNIIPromzdaniy)**
As the smaller of the two hockey rinks—and the most literal—Shayba Arena takes shape as a swirling puck, with its rakishly angled windows and yellow striping.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Ice Cube Curling Center</strong><br /><strong>Architect: Stroyproekt and Ural-Expert</strong><br />Even though it’s the smallest venue in the Coastal Cluster, the well-coiffed Ice Cube C — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Ice Cube Curling Center**
**Architect: Stroyproekt and Ural-Expert**
Even though it’s the smallest venue in the Coastal Cluster, the well-coiffed Ice Cube Curling Center holds the title of largest curling-specific building in the world.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Iceberg Skating Palace</strong><br /><strong>Architect: Mosproekt-4 with Ingeokom</strong><br />This glass-faceted ice palace for figure skating and short-track speed skating suggests both a w — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Iceberg Skating Palace**
**Architect: Mosproekt-4 with Ingeokom**
This glass-faceted ice palace for figure skating and short-track speed skating suggests both a wave and an iceberg—or maybe a cruise ship. After the Olympics, the building will be repurposed as a velodrome.
Photo © Sochi 2014

<strong>Adler Arena</strong><br /><strong>Architect: StoryInternational with Cannon Design</strong><br />The architects gave this speed-skating venue a relatively tame blue and gray glass entrance, bu — Know Your Winter Olympic Venues
**Adler Arena**
**Architect: StoryInternational with Cannon Design**
The architects gave this speed-skating venue a relatively tame blue and gray glass entrance, but lit the building with loud color schemes that rival the Bolshoy’s LED choreography.
Photo © Sochi 2014

View of the Coastal Cluster of Olympic venues in Sochi

Russia has changed immeasurably since it last hosted the Olympic Games in the summer of 1980. Or has it? The transformation of Sochi—a subtropical playground on the Black Sea once frequented by Joseph Stalin—into a gargantuan palace of winter sports is just the sort of absurd feat that might have made the Soviets proud.

The Coastal Cluster, a close-knit circle of shiny, undulating arenas and rinks master-planned by Populous, is architectural bling blown up to an Olympian scale. (So is the budget: even the government’s official estimate, $51 billion, surpasses the $40 billion China spent on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.) A woodsier aesthetic prevails 30 miles away in Krasnaya Polyana, the mountain village where the skiing events will take place. But on the shoreline of the Black Sea, Sochi’s ring of sports arenas glints like a set of oversize baubles bedazzled with LEDs.

Click on the image above to view a slide show of Sochi 2014 venues.