‘black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy’ by wendy smith

a recent graduate from the royal college of art, london-based architect wendy smith has conceived ‘black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy’, a project determined by a set of principles outlined by popular economist and government mentor nicholas nassim taleb. positioned in a post-olympic near-future, the development offers a series of hypothetical narratives told from the viewpoint of a premium insurance company, an industry refined in the practice of risk assessment and forth-coming estimations. the proposal examines an alternative use for the new olympic venues by deconstructing and remodeling them as a centerpiece for a future, post-london 2012 community. based on thorough and meticulous research, the study of the possibility of integrating a legacy master plan, the newly placed communities of chobham manor and eastwick would benefit from pleasure to governance, recreation and profit.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith unlike the millennium dome, whose short-term unpopularity was bolstered up in a boom era, the stadium faces a tougher economic climate with more extreme solutions needed.in smith’s thesis, she questions whether one can harness the momentum of a spiraling ‘black swan’ to be used for encouraging positive associations  with the olympic venues in the inevitable downtime post-games. using the premise that in times of financial struggle, new relationships are formed  between the public and private sector, with private investment dominating the agenda with aim of financial profit. in a competitive market driven by the need for media appreciation, the land becomes a playground for urban renewal, offering a new discourse that distances itself away from the  monopolized environment of a sanitized regeneration policy towards the implementation of generic environments. 

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith 2032: after a number of failed attempts to preserve it as a sporting venue, increasing public debt and spiralling maintenance costs trigger the policy in order to engineer the stadium to the status of a ruin.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith legacy masterplan indicating the location of engineered `black swan events.’ a self contained test-bed focusing on three areas of opportunity; the housing plots, the stadium and public space.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith the site becomes a playful landscape of untruths, of fabrications, building upon the olympic themes of showmanship and spectacle, of personal desires and social aspirations in its legacy life.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith physical deformation of the stadium as we see it today begins to erode the notion of a stadium as a palace to the sporting elite and allows us to re-frame our cultural understanding of it.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith series of objects exploring material properties using destruction as a design tool.

black swans and white elephants: an olympic legacy by wendy smith ‘infinity insurance’ is a fictional premier insurance company established in an alternative reality in which the oplc (olympic park legacy company) survived the government-led ‘quango bonfire` of 2010

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