Deyan Sudjic calls for Bird’s Nest stadium to be flatpacked and shipped to Stratford

Olympic venues from around the world should be shipped to London to create an open-air architectural museum, Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic has said.

Sudjic called for buildings including the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Wei Wei, to be dismantled and rebuilt in London alongside Stratford’s Olympic Park venues.

The Times asked several public figures about the future of the Olympic Park, Sudjic said: “Let’s flatten the flat-pack London stadium and ship in and re-erect Beijing’s Bird’s Nest as a tribute to its co-architect Wei Wei.

“Let’s bring Frei Otto’s brilliant Munich stadium with its tent roof, and relocate Barcelona’s Olympic Village and Tokyo’s swimming pool.

“Wrap them around Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre, and the Hopkins Velodrome, and, for a while, it could be the most extraordinary architectural museum in the world.”

Architect Maxwell Hutchinson called for work to ensure people continue to visit the area. “Some of the spaces should be turned into an arena for narrowboats and other passing boats,” he said.

“They have to find another way into the site from the transport hub that doesn’t involve going through the shopping centre.”

He also suggested changes to the Olympic stadium could help ensure its future. “The stadium has to be permanently covered over,” he said. “It needs a fabric roof on it like the Millennium Dome.”

Others were less deferential to London’s existing Olympic venues. Art critic Brian Sewell said: “My immediate reaction is that I would demolish the Anish Kapoor tower and leave the rest to rot.”