Sustainability was the theme as the Olympic Aquatics Stadium for the Rio 2016 Games was officially unveiled on Friday (8 April). The arena for swimming and water polo has been built using ‘nomadic architecture’ techniques that will allow it to be taken down and rebuilt as two smaller aquatics venues after the Games.

The venue also has an innovative natural ventilation system that will keep it cool while reducing energy usage. After inputting the average Games-time temperatures in Barra Olympic Park into complex mathematical calculations, 15,000 strategically positioned tiny holes were drilled into the structure to ensure a refreshing air-flow.

The government of Rio, which oversaw the venue’s construction with investment from the federal government of Brazil, said that without the energy-saving technology the equivalent of 10,000 household air conditioning units would have been needed to artificially cool the arena.

The competition pool will stage three test events this month (Rio City Government/Renato Sette Camara)

The Olympic Aquatics Stadium has two pools, one for competition and one for training, each with a capacity for 3.7 million litres of water. The seating surrounds the competition pool, with front-row seats as close as 10 metres from the pool. A special filter system will reduce the use of chemicals by 25 per cent and the water will be maintained between 25 and 28 degrees celsius, as advised by FINA, aquatic sport’s governing body.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff joined Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman and Francisco Dornelles, the acting governor of the state of Rio, in unveiling the venue. Rousseff said: “We are delivering a high-quality venue, on time and on budget.”

Left to right: Paes, Dornelles, Rousseff and Nuzman (Rio City Government/Renato Sette Camara)

The venue, which has a gross capacity of 14,997 people, will host its first competitions this month: the test events for Olympic swimming (15-20 April), Paralympic swimming (22-24 April) and water polo (25-29 April). The Olympic swimming test event is the traditional Maria Lenk Trophy, which will also act as the Olympic trials for the Brazilian team.

During the Olympic Games, the venue will host the swimming on 6-13 August and the knock-out stages of the water polo on 14-20 August, before staging the Paralympic swimming events on 8-17 September.

As with the Future Arena, which will be dismantled and its parts used to build four public schools, the Olympic Aquatics Stadium will be taken down and reused after the Games. Its parts will be employed in the construction of two aquatics centres, one with a covered 50m pool and capacity for 6,000 people, the other with a 50m pool with capacity for 3,000 people.

A work of art by Adriana Varejão adorns the Olympic Aquatics Stadium (Rio 2016/Alex Ferro)

Sport meets art

The Olympic Aquatics Stadium will also be an attraction for culture lovers, as it is enveloped by a work of art by celebrated Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão. Sixty-six panels, each 27 metres high, reproduce Celacanto Provoca Maremoto, an installation displayed at the famous Inhotim Institute in Minas Gerais. It uses Portuguese tiling and a baroque style to mix imagery of the sea and angels. The panels are anti-UV treated to help regulate the building’s temperature.