London's Olympic Stadium is going to be huge, providing seating for over 80,000 people. The problem is, after the games leave there won't be as many uses for a stadium of that size. The solution? Construct it out of flatpack materials like an Ikea bookshelf, then just take it down and move it elsewhere after the games.
The stadium is to have a permanent 25,000 seat main structure, but for the Olympics they'll also install a 55,000 seat upper tier. When the games are over, it can be (relatively) easily taken down and, if needed, shipped to another Olympic city for the next games. In fact, London is currently talking to Chicago, a possible host of the 2016 games, about sending the stadium their way.
Chicago is making a low-impact games a big part of their bid, proposing holding events in existing structures like Soldier Field and the Bulls Arena rather than the earth-raping clusterfuck that's happened in Beijing where they had to build all sorts of crazy stuff to prepare for the influx of people.
One could imagine a movable set of stadiums, moving from city to city and being set up for each games. It's a cool idea, one that I could see grabbing hold as the real impact of having to build a megastadium every four years in a different city becomes more apparent. [Guardian via Treehugger]