Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
TThe money shot in renovating the Olympia theater in London is a bank of stairs and ladders that go up, like an Aztec temple, to the loft that is between the main rooms of the original shows. In a modern tribute to its historical predecessors, the circle is also crowned with a glass crown, curved like a fan, its origami charms showing a sparkling, new, cubic zirconia tiara among heirloom diamonds.
Behind the tiara is what looks like a group of round towers, but in fact are the round ends of a steroidal stepped office, with the highest views of London, from Wembley to Crystal Palace. Those who have already accepted and enjoyed this idea are the Premier League’s media production staff, who have a game worthy of a small ball in its main stadium.
With the likes of Miss World and the Chemical Brothers, the Olympia has fueled the commercial and cultural scene. The Grand Hall, gleaming steel and glass combined with the delights of Victorian engineering, saw everything from cat shows and dog shows, to concerts, sports, martial arts and numerous trade shows promoting everything from cars to chocolate.
The jewel in Olympia’s commercial crown was (and still is) the Great House Show, founded in 1908 by the Daily Mail, with mock-up houses filled with modern home appliances. But nothing can compete with it Imre Kiralfy’s “water festival of light”.the famous Hungarian impresario of the 19th century, who flooded the Grand Hall to pay homage to Venice’s “bride of the sea”, complete with boats and gondolas.
Following the tradition of the exhibition halls made famous by the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Olympia evolved into a modern model with a wide variety of different types. The Grand Hall, the largest hall in England that was closed at the time of its construction in 1885, and the neighboring Pillar Hall, where Vivienne Westwood held her first show, were both designed by Henry Coe, a student of George Gilbert Scott, a gothic revivalist. The National Hall, a much smaller version of the barrel-vaulted Grand, was completed in 1923, while in 1929, Joseph Emberton, one of Britain’s leading architects, was commissioned to design the Empire Hall (now the Olympia Central), its modern jazz style looming over Hammersmith Street as if something had happened.
Backed by history and the drama of its architecture, Olympia reigned supreme for most of the 20th century. But eventually, it began to lose ground to new developments, especially the highly functional but soulless Docklands. Acquired by real estate firm Yoo Capital in 2017, Olympia has been restructured and expanded, a process that includes getting rid of ugly things, hiding the past and going gangbusters on shiny new implants. Costing $1.3 billion, the nearly decade-long renovation is the work of Heatherwick Studio and fellow architects. The opinion of the company SPPARC.
Situated in a triangular area between Hammersmith and Holland Park, Olympia spans the same area as neighboring Westfield. But if you were not a visitor or an exhibitor, it was inconsistent, a kind of city, like the west London Vatican or Monaco. “When we first visited in 2017, it was only one kilometer and if you didn’t have a ticket, that was it,” said Eliot Postma of Heatherwick Studio. “So all of our early discussions were about how do we create a public space where there isn’t one?”
Incidentally, there is a buzz about Battersea power station in an attempt to turn an obscure area of west London into a “destination”. No one ever said “Let’s have a drink at the Olympia”, but exhibitors can now choose from a wide range of F&B (the programmer talks about food and drink). This follows the raised area under the tiara. “Would it be enough to convince the Chelsea team?” a society magazine called Tatler.
As it turns out, the tiara is a shiny cherry on the cake of great development, which fills more than half a million square meters of office space, 30 restaurants and bars, two hotels, conference centers, gymnasiums, 3,800 music venues and events, and the largest theater in London after the National on the South Bank. There is also a new secondary school, Wetherby Pembridge, which opened last September, with a renovated shell of a car park designed by Joseph Emberton in 1937. All this adds to the appeal of Olympia as a city within a city, not just for lanyard wearers.
Emberton has been immortalized in the Emberton Walk, a high-rise circular walkway and an internal walkway that extends below the office and connects to another set of Aztec-style staircases and steps on Hammersmith Road. “It’s a new open road,” says Postma, “sitting on the shoulders of these Victorian buildings, really building on what the Victorians did, with the same level of ambition.
Designed as an open public walkway (time will tell how open it is), Emberton Walk connects the area, providing access to offices, workplaces, shops, restaurants and theatres. Yoo’s page shows a vibrant crowd of office workers, performers, shoppers, entertainers and revelers enjoying a variety of things, in the early June. But for now, things are going well – the stadium is due to open next year – the inner road is a lifeless tunnel, made up of a migraine-inducing digital ceiling, its screen flickering like a bright light.
The new addition features the biography of Thomas Heatherwick, a London-based graffiti artist. Garden Bridge and Google is nearing completion of its UK mega-HQ in King’s Cross. Heatherwick has a well-known reputation for hating “boring” architecture, as described in his books. Humanise manifesto published in 2023. The effect is typical of Tolkien—everything he touches. Most of his houses are in Middle-earth.
At Olympia, pleated motifs predominate: the roofs zig and the walls zag, the balustrades are like concertinas, even the door handles are cut. This is enhanced by the glass walls at the end of the Grand Hall, which look straight ahead to create a sense of calm. In order not to be bored, it’s a little busy hands and jazz, but the history of Coe and Emberton is like a slow drawing.
Given the scale and complexity of the program – Olympia had to remain open during construction – some changes may be in order. The new production facility helps and streamlines operations, taking lorries off the road. Olympia Way, which is at the front of the site, has been redeveloped as a magnificent square, revealing Coe’s Italian style in all its Victorian glory, with a restored iconography featuring the Greek gods of agriculture (the Grand Hall was designed to mirror Islington’s Royal Agricultural Hall).
The statues of Demeter and Persephone look at a very different London from 1885, but like the beautiful monde mirrors under Heatherwick’s tiara, the newly renovated Olympia is still the same spectacle. So in some ways nothing has changed.
