The design of the London Olympic stadium has been revealed. It will be an 80,000 seat stadium of which 55,000 of those seats will be demountable making way for a 25,000 seat athletic stadium when the games have finished. This seems to be the focus of the design – creating a spectacular stadium for the event but very much taking into account the purpose of the stadium after the main event has finished.

A fairly revolutionary approach to stadium building, and a refreshing move away from the tendency with stadium building for each one to out do the next in terms of size and pomposity.

The overall design of stadium captures this idea of ‘legacy’ that the games organisers have been so keen to talk up in there never ending quest for ‘sustainability.’ They’ve taken the softly softly approach with the design – the stadium will be shrouded in an unexciting sounding ‘fabric curtain’ and so far the pictures of the stadium have been bathed in a warm pink glow.

There’s obviously an agenda of doing it differently and opposing the kind of stadium design seen in the Beijing Olympic stadium with its astounding steel ‘birds nest’ structure. The problem is that whilst this is all very admirable the London stadium is a bit unremarkable. Which would you rather have as a legacy – a 25,000 seat open air athletic stadium or an 80,000 seat architectural behemoth?

The question is whether the promise of sustainability, and the insistence that the design reflects this, will really be enough to make it a truly great stadium?