The Ghost of Olympics Past

It's that time of the every-four-years again, when the world gathers to watch the best of the best compete for the gold, all the while ignoring how commercialized the Games are becoming. While all eyes are on London, I decide to celebrate in Montreal, Quebec, which hosted the Summer Olympics in 1976 (and home to one of my favorite returning Olympians, Canadian diver Alexandre Despaties).

While the athletes are the stars of the show to most, it is the venues themselves, the feats of construction and architectural marvel, expressed in steel and glass and concrete that I find fascinating. Similar to a World's Fair (and doubly so for St. Louis, which hosted both the Fair and the Olympics in 1904), hosting the Olympics allows a nation to showcase its vision of itself, of the future, through the central structures it chooses to create. And no structure is more representative, more iconic, than the central stadium from each Games, as it tends, in retrospect, to strongly reflect upon the time period in which it was built. The Montreal stadium is perhaps the finest example of this dated futuristic vision.

This majestic stadium still rises above the city, brightly lit at night, reaching towards the sky with a design truly representative of its era, a testament to the 70s vision of the yet unrealized everyone-has-a-jetpack future. The structure has a retractable roof design, which never really worked as planned. This roof was unique in that the fabric tent was designed to be lifted by cables into the overhanging arm. I can only imagine how breathtaking it would be to see this retraction in motion; these days the roof remains unchangingly closed. (For one, this permanent seal helps to winterize the stadium, keeping out the cold and snow that seems to encompass the city ten months of the year).

There are tours of the interior of the facilities, but perhaps the more interesting thing to do is ascend the sloping "elevator" on the back of the giant arm reaching over the stadium. From the top floor of the 574 foot tall tower, as well as during the ride up, you are treated to spectacular views of the city. By far the tallest structure in the area (it's the tallest inclined tower in the world), the stadium reveals an unobstructed view of downtown, and the remainders of the Olympic Village nearby.

When encountering such sweeping structures, especially those built so gracefully as the Montreal stadium, one doesn't even stop to think how such a building can stand up. The rising arm is built at an angle, where each successive floor hangs out further than the floor below it. How is this gravity-defying feat of engineering accomplished?

While gravity always has and always will act straight downward (in fact, gravity defines the direction "straight down"), engineers are able to channel this weight of a structure in different directions to maintain stability while producing seemingly impossible-looking results. As long as the center of mass of each level has support directly below it, the downward weight of the building can be partially transferred in the horizontal direction, keeping the structure stable (see Figure below). While it can't make the floors weightless, it can allow a slight shifting as the height increases. Similar methods of force transfer are the basis for much larger cantilevered structures, as well as suspension bridges.

When the center of mass of successive levels remain above the level below it, the structure remains stable (lower). When the center of mass of one level extends beyond the level below it, here be dragons, or at least catastrophic structural failure (upper).

As the London Games come to a close, and the temporary structures are torn down, and the East End is left to thrive with the remaining improvements, one is left to wonder how these new stadiums, the aquatic center, and train terminals will hold up in the next 36 years. Will they seem to the youth of tomorrow as Jetsons-esque as the Montreal stadium seems to us today?