Olympic Ruins - Part 2

Louisa Lim, reporting for NPR provides a great follow up to my previous post about the Olympic Ruins:

As the opening date for the London Olympics nears, Beijing’s acclaimed Olympic venues are saddled with high maintenance costs and are struggling to get by. And the most famous, the Bird’s Nest stadium, has been repudiated by its own creator, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

And the problem isn’t just one of high maintenance costs. The Bird’s Nest is struggling to even find a purpose for existence:

This summer, the stadium stands unused — except as a tourist destination — for three months, from the end of an equestrian show in May until its next engagement, a soccer match between British teams Arsenal and Manchester City at the end of July.

In contrast with the dismal prospects for the Bird’s Nest is the “success” story of the Water Cube:

Now, one part of it has been turned into a water park, where swimmers shoot down colorful tubes into the pools of water. It’s even launched a line of branded goods, including Water Cube alcohol, which sells at a cool $150 a bottle.

But still, turning a profit isn’t easy.

“It’s extremely, extremely difficult not to lose money,” Yang Qiyong, the Water Cube’s deputy manager, says with a frank laugh.

And further into the story:

Yang says the Water Cube narrowly broke even last year, though it required $1.5 million in government subsidies.

These are the stories of the two most iconic structures of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Just four years later and one of the buildings is struggling to even be useful and the other is finding “success” only through government subsidy. Perhaps usefulness after the games are over should be a much higher priority for the organizers, planners, and architects of the Olympic Games.