The controversy over Tokyo's planned new National Stadium, to be used in the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, continues. In view of the complicated construction method, the high cost of building and operating the stadium as well as the lengthy construction and the possibility that the new structure will ruin the surrounding landscape, the organizations and officials concerned should quickly consider switching to a simpler design that eliminates these problems.
The dispute over the main stadium for the 2020 games has dragged on because the Japan Sport Council, which is overseeing the project, refuses to acknowledge the criticism and consider alternative proposals put forward by experts and ordinary citizens alike. Instead it sticks obstinately to the original plan. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which supervises the JSC, is also responsible for the mess because it has given the JSC free rein.
In the fall of 2012, the JSC adopted a design proposal by London-based architect Zaha Hadid in an international design competition. Her design's main architectural feature is two gigantic arches — each with a span of 370 meters — that support a retractable roof. The construction cost of the new stadium was originally estimated at ¥130 billion, but a revised estimate saw the cost swell to ¥300 billion. The enormous gap cannot be explained by a surge in the price of construction materials and personnel costs, leading one to wonder if the original estimate was correctly calculated.