At the recent Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, the opening and closing ceremonies dazzled audiences around the world. Spectacular, theatrical and hugely sophisticated, they exemplified the fact that, although a competition may have several venues, the main stadium remains the focal point of every major event. But how can a stadium meet the huge technical demands of these events, and their capacity criteria, while still being able to adapt for a long-term legacy once the main event has finished?

The solution lies in the integration of the permanent and temporary. It’s only by including temporary structures and seating in the initial design that buildings gain the flexibility they need to adapt to a changing set of needs. In Sochi, for example, we incorporated temporary seating that will allow the Olympic Stadium to expand to accommodate the 45,000 seats required for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, before reducing to a final legacy capacity of 25,000 for the local football team.

Similarly, the Incheon Stadium, which will host the 2014 Asian Games, is a 70,000 seat stadium that will reduce to 30,000 seats, thanks to our design that has one permanent seating stand and three temporary ones, destined to become park landscaping for the city’s residents and visitors to enjoy once the temporary structures are removed.

This flexible approach has its roots in Populous’ design for Sydney’s Olympic Stadium, now the ANZ stadium, where an initial capacity of 110,000 seats was reduced to 83,000 after the Games by removing the end stands and reconfiguring the roof. By the London Olympics in 2012, our thinking had evolved to focus on design as a whole, rather than construction. We broke the Stadium down into its constituent parts to explore how a building could be planned from the outset to transform itself and be fit for a long-term legacy – and the result is a multi-purpose Stadium of 60,000 seats (reduced from an Olympic capacity of 80,000) that is capable of hosting IRB World Cup Rugby and Premier League football as well as concerts and other events.

Designing in this way has inherent challenges: namely, ensuring that at each stage of its evolution the building has architectural merit – during the event itself, when the focus of the world’s media is on the stadium; and afterwards, when visitors and residents must appreciate and use it as part of the city’s fabric. In addition, although the end goal of the design is the same – to reduce in scale after the main event – this can’t be achieved by a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Each stadium has unique requirements and these must be reflected in innovative design solutions.

At Populous, our understanding of a stadium’s cultural significance means that we’re constantly devising innovative ways to balance the cultural and technical needs of the main event with the social responsibility of designing buildings that have a long-term legacy. It’s a journey that, for us, began in Sydney in 2000 and will, we are sure, continue to challenge and fascinate far into this century and beyond.

This article was written by Populous principals Ben Vickery and Tom Jones

Masters students at the Russian International Olympic University (RIOU) in Sochi have quizzed three of the key sports administrators behind the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

Jean-Claude Killy, the IOC coordination commission chairman for Sochi 2014; Gilbert Felli, IOC senior advisor and former Olympic Games executive director; and Dmitry Chernyshenko, CEO of Gazprom-Media Holding and former president and CEO of the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee, made a visit to RIOU’s state-of-the-art campus in Sochi city centre to meet students.

The three senior administrators visited Sochi to mark the anniversary of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony on February 7. The RIOU is one of the key legacy projects of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

During their meetings with RIOU’s current intake of Master of Sport Administration (MSA) students, the trio talked about various organisational aspects of Sochi 2014, including finances and budgeting, sponsorship, recruitment and leadership.

After meeting with the MSA students, Killy, a triple Olympic champion in Alpine skiing and an IOC Honorary Member, said: “RIOU is a direct legacy of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. I was delighted to talk to the students and share my experiences with them. We are completing our careers as they are just embarking on theirs. This is how continuity in the Olympic Movement works.

“The students were very keen to have as much information as possible so we gave them a lot of advice because they are young and are at the beginning of their careers.”

RIOU offers its MSA students a unique experience: a one-year immersion in Olympic culture and best-practice, in an Olympic Games host city, with access to expert professors from all over the world, as well as high-profile guests from the Olympic Movement.

Chernyshenko, who is also the president of the Kontinental Hockey League, described how Sochi’s status as a centre of Olympic learning was established during the preparations for Sochi 2014.

He said: “The preparations for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games involved thousands of specialists, who accumulated invaluable experience. Now they are working all over Russia, applying and disseminating their knowledge, and thus helping to raise the quality of standards in different areas of the sports industry.”

The core modules on RIOU’s MSA include: Economics of Sports and the Olympics; Governance, Policy and the Olympic Movement; Research Paradigms in Sports Management;  Business of Sports and the Olympic Games; and Sport Marketing and Communications.

SportAccord Convention announced on Tuesday that PwC will be a Gold Partner of this year’s event, which takes place from 6-11 April 2014 in Belek/Antalya, Turkey. The agreement marks PwC’s second year as a Gold Partner. 

“The first year of our partnership with SportAccord Convention was extremely successful and we are very pleased to be continuing as a Gold Partner in 2014,” said Robert Gruman, PwC Russia Advisory Leader, who heads PwC's Global Sports Mega-Events Centre of Excellence.

“SportAccord Convention provides us with networking opportunities and enhances our ability to build relationships with International Federations and the global sports movement.”

PwC’s Sports Mega-Events Centre of Excellence comprises a network of professionals experienced in bringing value at all phases of the sports mega-events lifecycle. 

For the Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, PwC’s experts, in partnership with the Sochi Organising Committee, are carrying out over 200 projects in several key areas, from strategic and operational planning to supply chain management, from HR consulting to risk management. 

“Our Gold Partnership with PwC has been of great value to us as an organisation and we are gratified to know that the feeling is mutual” said Nis Hatt, Managing Director of SportAccord Convention.

“We are very pleased that the partnership is continuing and that we are able to provide a platform for PwC to meet its business objectives.”

In 2013, PwC conducted the first Economic Impact Study of SportAccord Convention and estimated the direct and indirect impact of the event in Saint Petersburg, Russia at USD7.69 million.