Now that the celebrations surrounding the announcement that Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympics have died down, attention is turning to the physical transformations that this will bring the city, for better or for worse.
Front and center is the scheme for the New National Stadium, designed by Iraq-born U.K.-based Zaha Hadid. Selected as the winner of an international competition in November 2012, this stupendous mother ship of a building, looking uncannily like an intergalactic bike helmet, is set to obliterate the existing Kasumigaoka National Stadium near Sendagaya, the central venue of the 1964 Olympics.
With a capacity of 80,000, the new stadium nearly doubles the seating capacity of the existing stadium, and it will be the first Olympic stadium to boast a retractable roof. These features aside, renderings of the proposal show it looming incongruously above the leafy surroundings of the Meiji Outer Garden, dwarfing other major public buildings, including Meiji Memorial Picture Galley and the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, designed by Fumihiko Maki.