BY ZACH MORTICE
The ski jump tower is the focal point of the site. Photo by Marco Esposito/SWA.
Deployed with a small footprint, a light touch, and ample flexibility, the Alpensia Olympic Park in PyeongChang, South Korea, which is hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics cross-country skiing, biathlon, and ski jump competitions, is the result of clever planning by landscape architects.
Originally, the Gangwondo Development Corporation (the ultimate client for the facility) and the engineering and construction company Taeyoung planned to put these three venues into two separate valleys. But SWA’s Sausalito, California, office suggested that these venues could be consolidated into one valley across a single 350-acre site instead. SWA says it?s the most compact Winter Olympics design of its type ever. This more compact plan preserved forested hillsides and helped compress athletes and observers into a bustling hub of activity with a carefully choreographed arrival sequence. ?When the venues were distributed, it became harder and harder to not carve up so much of the land, and have the sense of place still be right for spectators and worldwide TV coverage,? says Marco Esposito, a principal at SWA.
SWA?s plan puts the ski jump and stadium to the west, and the cross-country and biathlon stadiums to the east. Linked by a central plaza, these stadiums and race routes orbit each other, with the cross-country course veering south, and the biathlon (in the Winter Olympics, a combinatio...