AIA News from OUR FRIENDS at AIA UTAH Olympic Venues Offer Medal-Caliber Architecture Eleven Projects from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games

AIARCHITECT FEBRUARY, 2002 AIA News FROM OUR FRIENDS AT AIA UTAH Olympic Venues Offer Medal-Caliber Architecture Eleven projects from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games

The athletes aren't the only winners out in Utah these days. Behold 11 venues that actually are helping competitors be swifter, higher, stronger, and keeping spectators closer, comfier, and safer. (All architects listed, except HOK, are Salt Lake City offices.) Some are models of restoration, others are the greenest of the green, and some offer technology never before used in architecture projects. Enjoy!

Olympic Village, University of Utah Campus, by Architectural Design West The Olympic Village housing, built in 2002 by the University of Utah, offers 20 low-rise apartment and suite-style buildings. De- signing for students, but with the Olympic Winter Games in mind, the architect placed the housing units in historic Fort Douglas (which had been transferred to the university by the army). The housing blends with the 19th-century fort buildings on a 62-acre site that features six separate "neighborhoods," each with its own design, to accommodate the different lifestyles of the students. Each neighborhood is connected to landscaped open space and pedestrian walkways, which flow back to the campus over a pedestrian bridge. The heart of this student community is the Heritage Center, the student commons. Architectural Design West, in asso- ciation with HENV, Inc., guided the $120 million project. The university also undertook a $3 million renovation of Fort Douglas Of- ficers' Circle, a group of two-story Victorian-era homes and their surroundings, which will house Olympic Village services, recreation, and retail areas. Cooper Roberts Simonsen and MJSA Architects, Inc., conducted the renovation work on the Officers' Circle, which serves as the centerpiece of the International Zone during the Win- ter Games.

Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium, East Salt Lake City, by FFKR Ar- chitects Rice-Eccles Stadium, site of the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics, has expanded its normal accommodations for 46,500 spectators to seat in excess of 50,000 for the games. The expansion project, completed in 1998, was originally planned with three separate phases, each to be constructed between football seasons. The architects based the bowl seating configuration on economics and a tight construction schedule, as well as creating a sense of enclosure. The lower bowl is constructed of slab-on-grade seating tiers while the upper bowl is steel. The 2002 Winter Olym- pics Games' requirements dictated that a northeast tunnel be added for direct access to the playing field and that the roof of the stadium box accommodate the press. Ground was broken for the project in April 1997, and construction proceeded during the 1997 football season.

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Salt Lake Ice Center (Delta Center), Salt Lake City, by FFKR Ar- chitects Competition in figure skating and short-track speed skating will be held in the 20,000-seat Salt Lake Ice Center, also known as the Delta Center. The 800,000-square-foot indoor sports and enter- tainment facility serves as home to the NBA Utah Jazz and the WNBA Utah Starzz. The building's flexible seating arrangement, although optimized for basketball, accommodates hockey, wres- tling, concerts, convocations, circuses, rodeos, and vehicular com- petitions of all sorts. Designed as a community emergency center in 1991, the center's earthquake-resistant roof was the first of its kind in the U.S. The venue also is unique for its million-gallon water reservoir which holds rain and snow runoff and releases water in a regulated flow into the city water system as needed. Located in the very heart of Salt Lake City, Delta Center resembles a giant urban lantern surrounded by heavily landscaped plazas. The architect rotated the building at a 45-degree angle to the city grid, creating three large triangular urban spaces and a sunken service yard. Within each of the three pedestrian spaces there is a small amphitheater that can be used by civic and arts organizations for events such as the Utah Arts Festival. Principal circulation areas at the exterior building face allow for direct and highly visible crowd movement.

Utah Olympic Oval, West Kearns, by Gillies Stransky Brems Smith, PC The 2001 Utah Olympic Oval hosts speed skating for 10 Olympic events. In trial runs at the 2001 World Speed Skating Champion- ship and World Cup, speed skaters attained 5 of 11 world records, and medal hopefuls are predicting more during the Olympics. Utah's climate offers natural advantages to creating fast ice: high altitude with reduced air resistance, less air trapped in the ice (so water molecules are packed closer together for denser, faster ice), and dry air for a condensation-free, smoother ice surface. To these natural features, the design team added: • A super-flat concrete slab to support flat ice, allowing more of a skater's energy to be directed forward • A variation-free multilayered slab with a heated subsurface to prevent ground heaving. It was placed in a continuous pour with a special rolling surface finisher • Consistent temperature throughout the ice sheet to avoid soft spots that slow a skater down or grab a blade poorly—this required strategic placement of more than 30 miles of cooling pipes and 74 miles of rebar—plus a special concrete mix that filled and settled well, could be pumped, and cured with minimal shrink- age • Consistent and low air temperature for the ideal skating envi-

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ronment and to minimize variations on the ice's surface temperature; the building's cable suspension system helps by allowing for a shallower roof structure (3 feet instead of 18 feet) with 22 percent less air volume. The cable suspension system also helped the building achieve one of the first of 13 worldwide Leadership in Energy & Environ- mental Design (LEED) ratings from the U.S. Green Building Coun- cil. It required 950 tons less steel and a smaller mechanical system than a typical building of its size. Other LEED factors include low energy usage, recycling, and good air quality—all attributes sup- ported by the 2002 Olympic environmental philosophy. The out- standing Utah Olympic Oval has been honored with 2001 Regional AIA Merit and Utah AIA Honor awards.

E Center, Valley City, by VCBO Architecture, LLC, and Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc. (Kansas City, Mo.) The E Center, a 210,000-square-foot indoor facility seating 12,000, serves as home to the International Hockey League's Utah Griz- zlies. Built in 1997, it also functions as a state-of-the-art perfor- mance/concert and public assembly hall. The E Center will be the venue for ice hockey and ice sledge hockey competition during the Olympics. The center houses 40 suites, club seating, upper and lower bench seating, concessions, five team locker rooms, gift shops, and a variety of restaurants and training facilities. One en- tire end of the facility has moveable bleachers that slide to the sides and a built-in full-fly stage that allows for any size production. It also features a state-of-the-art sound system designed specifically for the center by Bose. The floor of the new event center can accommodate rodeos, tractor pulls, motocross, trade shows, auto shows, annual recreation shows, ice skating shows, short-track ice racing, and, of course, Olympic hockey.

Main Media Center, Salt Lake City, by MHTN Architects In April 1998, Salt Lake County officials approved an expansion of the Salt Palace Convention Center, site of the Main Media Center. The expanded facility has more than 430,000 square feet of usable floor space, including 110,000 square feet of exhibition space, an additional 10,000 square feet of ballroom space, and 40,000 square feet of common area space. The architect also added a three-level underground parking structure with 600 spaces. The convention center houses the International Broadcast Center (begun in Au- gust 2001) and the Main Media Center (begun in November 2001). Now complete, the Main Media Center accommodates 9,000 press and broadcast media personnel.

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The Ice Sheet at Ogden, by FFKR Architects This Olympic-caliber skating facility for ice hockey, figure skating, and short-track speed skating seats 2,000 on a spectacular site at Weber State University in Ogden. Built in 1993, it was funded by the State of Utah, Ogden City, Weber County, and Weber State University, creating a multiclient base that led to the challenge of combining an Olympic training facility and a community skating center. The facility includes a regulation world championship ice sheet, team rooms, instructors' area, officials' suite, star dressing rooms, skate rental and concessions, classroom, lounge, adminis- tration area, ticket sales, ice maintenance and equipment work areas, and changing and resting areas for ice users and spectators. Natural light and views are high on the design priority list. The building allows for effective control of natural light when events requiring controlled lighting—ice-skating shows and hockey—take place. The facility is also designed to accommodate TV broadcast- ing and the special lighting and sound requirements of Olympic events.

Utah Olympic Park, Park City, by VCBO Architecture, LLC Located in the Wasatch Mountains, the Utah Olympic Park serves as the venue for bobsled, luge, skeleton, ski jumping, and the jumping portion of Nordic combined. One of only three such runs in North America, it accommodates an audience of 21,000 for ski jumping and 15,600 for track events. Planned as a unique center for ski jumping, freestyle aerial, snowboarding, and bobsled and luge events, the park gave weight to Utah's bid for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The jumps are specifically designed to the most current requirements of the new and evolving sport. The kickers— the curved ramp section that catapults the athlete into the air— are removable to allow quick changes as the sport evolves. Envi- ronmentally, the architects strove to preserve vegetation, reduce cuts in the hills, and integrate the facilities and structures into the natural terrain. The Base Village serves as the center of activities and as an arrival point for visitors and spectators. The Day Lodge, first of several buildings, will be connected to future restaurant and lodge facilities by the stair and elevator towers, and continuous observation decks will run between buildings.

Soldier Hollow Competition Management Building, Midway, by VCBO Architecture, LLC The Soldier Hollow Cross-Country/Biathlon venue includes facilities to accommodate athletes, spectators, media, security, emergency operations, and maintenance personnel. The Competition Management Building, specifically designed to simultaneously time and manage both the cross-country and biathlon, is a first of its kind in the world. The building is venues: it collects data from all over the site by the use of bar-coded jerseys worn by the athletes and checkpoints through the courses. The system then distributes the data to the judges, spectators, and the media. This allows the judges and officials to monitor the remote parts of the competition from one location. The system also eliminates delays in reporting leaders throughout the competition. The overall design of the building proclaims its high-tech function while using vernacular materials and colors. The building's corrugated metal echoes the surrounding farming architecture, while its tan concrete allows it to blend into the surrounding Wasatch Mountain State Park.

The Day Lodge at Soldier Hollow, Midway, by HFS Architects This rustic, two-story 11,000-square-foot ski lodge serves the Sol- dier Hollow Olympic venue for cross-country, biathlon, and Nordic combined events. It is built, in part, from recycled Douglas fir timbers salvaged from a trestle built across the Great Salt Lake in 1902. These naturally fire-resistant timbers help carry the heavy snow loads. Clerestory windows bring natural light into the interior, while deep eaves keep snow away from the foundation and shade the interior in summer. Inside, the lodge features a 32-foot-tall fire- place constructed of stone salvaged from the ski jump excavation. The building houses rental and retail operations as well as a kitchen, shower facility, and restrooms. Built in six months in 2000 for just under $1 million dollars, it will continue to be a cozy retreat for skiers tackling the 23 kilometers of expert cross-country and biathlon loops after the Olympics.

The Peaks Ice Arena, Provo, by VCBO Architecture, LLC The Peaks Arena at Seven Peaks Resort offers 114,000 square feet of building and features dual international- and NHL-size ice hockey rinks as well as seating for 2,000 spectators that can be in- creased to 8,000 during the Olympics. The facility also contains multiple locker facilities, a pro shop, clubrooms, a concession area, and administrative offices. Seven Peaks Ice Arena hosts the men's and women's Olympic hockey events and serves Club League Hockey and the Brigham Young University Ice Cats. The facility also handles community functions such as concerts and parties.