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| Japan scraps Zaha Hadid's Tokyo Olympic stadium design | Japan scraps Zaha Hadid's Tokyo Olympic stadium design |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Japan’s prime minister has announced that controversial plans for the main stadium for the 2020 Olympics – designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid – will be scrapped and started again from scratch because of spiralling costs. | |
| Amid growing public concern about the cost of the new stadium, Shinzo Abe said it wouldn’t now be completed in time for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.. The dramatic stadium was due to host the opening match and the final. | |
| Related: Zaha Hadid's Tokyo Olympic stadium slammed as a 'monumental mistake' and a 'disgrace to future generations' | |
| “We have decided to go back to the start on the Tokyo Olympics-Paralympics stadium plan, and start over from zero,” Abe told reporters after a meeting at his office with Yoshiro Mori, chairman of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee. | “We have decided to go back to the start on the Tokyo Olympics-Paralympics stadium plan, and start over from zero,” Abe told reporters after a meeting at his office with Yoshiro Mori, chairman of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee. |
| The government has come under growing criticism as the estimated cost for the new National Stadium rose to 252bn yen (£1.3bn, $2bn). | |
| “I have been listening to the voices of the people for about a month now, thinking about the possibility of a review,” Abe said. | “I have been listening to the voices of the people for about a month now, thinking about the possibility of a review,” Abe said. |
| The prime minister said he had obtained the consent of Yoshiro Mori, a former prime minister, and instructed the sports and Olympics ministers to start preparing immediately a process to choose a new plan. | |
| Hadid, best known in the UK for the London 2012 Aquatics Centre, won the design contest for the Tokyo stadium in 2012, but faced a barrage of criticism over its appearance, including warnings it would be “a monumental mistake” and “just ridiculous”. | |
| And amid growing international scrutiny of the costs and benefits of hosting a Games - something that recently elected International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has promised to focus on - and domestic public pressure, Mori will now be forced to look for a more cost effective solution. | |
| One Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki, said it looked “like a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away”. Pritzker prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, 86, organised a symposium to protest against the scheme, and was joined by fellow leading Japanese architects Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma and Sou Fujimoto. A petition was launched calling for the project to be scrapped. | |
| Last year Hadid hit back at two years of complaints, telling Dezeen magazine she was saddened by the attacks, which she claimed were motivated by not wanting a foreigner to build in Tokyo. | |
| “I think it’s embarrassing for them,” she said. “Many of them were friends of mine, actually the ones which I supported before like Toyo Ito, who I worked with on a project in London. I’ve known him for a long time. | |
| “I understand it’s their town. But they’re hypocrites because if they are against the idea of doing a stadium on that site, I don’t think they should have entered the competition. The fact that they lost is their problem. | |
| “They don’t want a foreigner to build in Tokyo for a national stadium. On the other hand, they all have work abroad. Whether it’s Sejima, Toyo Ito, or Maki or Isozaki or Kengo Kuma.” | |
| The affair has echoes of the controversy that surrounded Hadid’s Aquatics Centre in London, where costs soared three-fold to £269m as a result of the ambitious design and certain elements had to be pared back. | |
| Olympic stadiums traditionally have a chequered history due to the difficulties in planning for a future beyond the Games. | |
| The Bird’s Nest in Beijing is rarely used, although will be pressed into action for the world athletics championships this summer, while the legacy issues with the venues built for the 2004 Games in Athens have become a symbol for the subsequent wider malaise in the country. | |
| The debate over the future of London’s Olympic Stadium, where total costs have now soared to £701m thanks to an ambitious plan to convert it into a multi-use venue that will become West Ham United’s home ground, has also proved controversial. |