Special Issue: Olympic Design

摘要

Modern Olympic Games are major global events that involve the production of a variety of artefacts that facilitate both athletic and cultural functions. The Olympic design milieu is multi-platformed and ranges from the production of material constructs—architecture, graphic design, fashion, product design—to the design of intangible entities, such as services and branding campaigns. The Olympic design milieu also includes processes of consumption, interpretation and appropriation of these products by their wider global audiences. In spite of their significance for the national and global narratives at the time of their production, and the vivid media discourses that they generate, only a few Olympic designs have become part of the discourse of Design History. Cases of Olympic design that have gained a paradigmatic status include the graphic designs for the Tokyo 1964 Olympics designed by Yusaku Kamekura and for the Mexico 1968 Olympics designed by Lance Wyman, Pier Luigi Nervi's Rome 1960 stadium, and the urban regeneration plans of Barcelona for the 1992 Olympic Games. On the other hand, some products of Olympic Games have been associated with national guilt or regret (such as the 1936 Berlin National Stadium designed by Albert Speer, or the Montreal 1976 stadium designed by Roger Taillibert—having been dubbed The Big Mistake'), while most have fallen to oblivion or abandonment. The last is especially the case for various athletic venues that find little use in the longue duree of the post-Olympic era.