Architecture was once an Olympic event

Can you picture an Olympic hopeful waking up at the crack of dawn to spend hours hunched over a drafting table, perfecting their blueprints? Thanks to International Olympic Committee co-founder Pierre de Coubertin, the concept became a reality when the IOC began awarding medals in the categories of sports-related architecture, music, literature, painting, and sculpture at the 1912 Stockholm Games.  

The first gold medal in architecture went to the Swiss team of Eugène-Edouard Monod and Alphonse Laverriére for their "Building Plan of a Modern Stadium." By 1928, the architecture competition had been divided into the subcategories of town planning and design, with the Netherlands' Jan Wils winning gold in the latter for his still-standing Olympic Stadium Amsterdam. However, the subjective process of selecting artistic champions ultimately produced some questionable results. Sometimes, finicky judges refused to award gold (or silver, or bronze) medals when the quality of submissions failed to meet their lofty standards. Other times, such as during the 1936 Berlin Games, the host country’s creative teams tallied a suspiciously disproportionate share of winning hardware.

Artistic competitions remained part of the Olympics following a hiatus for World War II, with Austria's Adolf Hoch and Finland's Yrjö Lindegren claiming architecture gold in 1948. However, the writing was on the wall for these Jim Thorpes of the compass and T-square, as new IOC President Avery Brundage (who started in 1952) strongly discouraged the proliferation of professionalsin the amateur realm. The creative arts were permanently relegated to the sideshow of Olympic exhibitions in 1952, and the hard-earned efforts of champion builders, singers, and writers from the first half of the 20th century were banished to obscurity when their medals were stricken from the Olympic record books.

When architecture was a sport at the Olympics

Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam by Jan Wils, 1928. Image: Netherlands Architecture Institute

It may be a part of the Olympics the world forgot, but from 1912 to 1948, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed out medals across five creative arts categories including architecture, painting, sculpture, literature and music.

For the father of the modern Olympics Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the IOC, art competitions had always been part of his original intentions for the modern Olympics as they were in the ancient Olympics, which had competitions for music, singing and public speaking.

De Coubertin wrote at the time, “In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again.”

At the Olympic Congress in Paris, 1906, in front of a crowd of famous architects, writers, sculptors and even actors, de Coubertin made the most significant recommendation, which was to introduce the art competition.

The first architecture competition was held in 1912 at the Stockholm Games. All entries in all categories of the art competitions were required to draw links between art and sport. The architecture competition allowed both built work and speculative designs to enter as well as designs for town planning. The first ever Olympic gold medal in architecture was won by Eugène-Edouard Monod and Alphonse Laverriére of Switzerland for their town planning project Building Plan of a Modern Stadium.

No gold medals were awarded in 1920 (Antwerp) or 1924 (Paris). In the 1928 Amsterdam games, Dutch architect Jan Wils won the gold medal for the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, the very stadium that played host to many of the Olympic sports.

Skiing Stadium by Hermann Kutschera, 1936. Image: olympic-museum.de

In the 1936 Berlin games, Austria’s Hermann Kutschera won the gold medal for his Skiing Stadium design that was never built. In the same year, art, sport and politics became entangled with the Reich Stadium by Werner March and Walter March taking out the gold medal in town planning for the Reich Stadium. The massive scale of the stadium was intended to show off the rising power of Nazi Germany.

The last-ever gold medal in architecture was won by Austrian Adolf Hoch for Ski Jumping Hill on the Kobenzl at the 1948 London games. Following the 1948 games, the IOC abandoned the Olympic art competition due to the significantly high number of professionals entering, which went against the spirit of the games being an amateur competition.

In 2004, IOC revived the idea of art competition with the introduction of the Olympic Art Sport Contest. But this too was short-lived, and was no where to be seen in the 2016 Rio games.