Brisbane’s promise of a shimmery new Olympic stadium is part of a long bedazzling  legacy of promises gone wrong

Artist impressions of Olympic stadiums often promise green legacies, but behind the glossy architectural visuals lies a concrete reality that the public cannot afford to ignore.

The new Brisbane Stadium glossy aerials promise a shimmering oval gently nestled in a lush forest of mature gum trees, as though a 63,000-seat stadium had been magically lowered, fully complete, into Victoria Park without so much as disturbing a kookaburra.

These are the Queensland government’s official artist impressions of the newly announced Olympic stadium for Brisbane 2032 and, at a glance, they radiate the same feel-good sustainability aura that once accompanied the Games’ now-abandoned “climate-positive” promise.

Yet, these images are pure sleight-of-hand.

Absent are the hectares of lay-down yards and haul roads a concrete bowl of this size demands, as well as the hard-paved forecourts every crowd safety code requires

Absent are the hectares of lay-down yards and haul roads a concrete bowl of this size demands, as well as the hard-paved forecourts every crowd safety code requires.

Not to mention the scar that blasting Brisbane tuff (a type of volcanic sandstone) will carve into the city’s last inner-ring green lung.

In a single render the government bamboozles us, hoping we forget the Olympic Host Contract clause that bans new venues on greenfield sites, Lord Mayor Schrinner’s $33-million “Barrambin” parkland master-plan, and Premier Crisafulli’s broken election pledge of “no new stadiums.” The picture asks us to be, quite literally, bedazzled.

These images are not harmless representations of future imaginaries; they are political instruments that pre-empt dissent.

“The more perfect the render, the less chance there is for public scrutiny”

This glossy visual sleight ties directly to what I call “bedazzlement”—a communicative tactic in which hyper-real 3D renderings present one flawless, ready-made urban future that lulls and lures viewers into passive acceptance.

My colleagues and I argue that such high-fidelity images “depict ready-made, preconceived and pre-fabricated urban futures as persuasive fait accompli. They do not leave any room for community discussion, criticism, input or alternative urban imaginaries.”

In other words, the more perfect the render, the less chance there is for public scrutiny—even if it depicts the unachievable. Bedazzlement is a political tactic to anaesthetise critique by creating artist impressions so compelling that we stop asking hard questions.

Brisbane 2032

This bedazzlement is not hypothetical, it is happening now. The artist’s impression recently released for the proposed Brisbane 2032 Olympic Stadium at Victoria Park continues a legacy of misleading communities, perhaps more starkly than ever.

A 63,000-seat stadium — larger than Optus Stadium in Perth — cannot be built within that footprint without clearing most of the surrounding parklands.

The image shows a vast stadium ringed tightly with mature eucalypts (some up to 30–40 m high), nestled in what appears to be undisturbed parkland. But this is a fantasy. A 63,000-seat stadium, larger than Optus Stadium in Perth, cannot be built within that footprint without clearing most of the surrounding parklands.

A preliminary Victoria Park site analysis commissioned by community advocacy group Save Victoria Park makes this plain: during construction, the temporary worksite footprint is almost three times the stadium’s perimeter. In Games mode, the venue must not only seat 63,000 spectators but provide shaded, flat forecourts capable of safely holding another 63,000 people queuing for the next session—equivalent to seven football fields of space, including infrastructure like toilets and food outlets.

There also needs to be an additional 10,000 sq m the size of two football fields, of food, beverage and entertainment facilities surrounding the stadium to help delay the departure of approx. 7800 spectators so not to overload the transport network.

The deception deepens when we consider site topography. Victoria Park is no flat paddock. The site includes grade differentials of up to 35 metres, meaning construction will require enormous land cuts, retaining walls up to 20 m high, and extensive stormwater re-engineering. None of this complexity—nor the concrete, steel, carbon footprint or construction impact—are being conveyed by the official renders released to the public. Also absent are mandatory stadium safety features: blast setbacks, vehicular access rings, and evacuation plazas sized at five to  seven sq m per person, as internationally required by IOC Venue Requirements and FIFA Safety Regulations.

In this light, the artist impression is not simply optimistic,it is actively misleading. It invites Brisbane residents to imagine a stadium that preserves the park, requires minimal intervention, and somehow sidesteps both engineering reality and climate consequence. It is, in short, a textbook case of Olympic bedazzlement.

This latest rendering of the Victoria Park stadium connects directly to a broader pattern of greenwashing in Olympic infrastructure planning. Brisbane 2032 was originally pitched as the first “climate-positive” Olympics, but that commitment quietly disappeared when this clause was dropped from the Olympic Host Contract in May 2024.

The public was not  told until recently. Despite the dropped commitment, the greenery in the polished visuals remains, implying minimal impact while concealing significant social, cultural and environmental costs.

Victoria Park, known as Barrambin to its Traditional Custodians,is far from a vacant lot. It is Brisbane’s largest inner-city green space and has already received $33 million in ratepayer-funded master planning by Brisbane City Council.

The master plan aimed to preserve Victoria Park as the “green heart” of the city. Placing a stadium here contradicts not only that vision, but also Premier Crisafulli’s pre-election pledge and the IOC’s own Host Contract requirements, which explicitly prioritise the use of previously developed or degraded land over greenfield sites.

Victoria Park is also heritage-listed and culturally significant; it helps regulate Brisbane’s urban microclimate, supports biodiversity, and provides vital recreation space.

Logistically, too, the proposal is flawed. The analysis by Save Victoria Park shows the site’s steep and uneven terrain. It would require deep excavation and blasting through Brisbane tuff, disrupting nearby hospitals, schools, and residential areas. Unlike The Gabba or Suncorp Stadium, the park lacks necessary transport and hospitality infrastructure, making it an impractical and expensive location for a mega-event venue.

To test whether bedazzlement is now baked into Olympic bidding and planning culture, I systematically reviewed every Summer and Winter Games from Sydney 2000 to Brisbane 2032: 13 past and four  future events.

Of the 17 Games analysed, only six  host cities (and now Brisbane) decided to build entirely new Olympic stadiums for their main event: three on greenfield and 3 on brownfield sites. I analysed these new builds by collecting three visual sets: the pre-construction artist impression, aerial photos taken during construction, and post-completion images.

Architectural artist impressions are rendered in an overly utopian style representing the most favourable features such as happy people, blue skies, lots of trees and green space—everything is perfect

The visual persuasion tactic consistently employed becomes easily apparent through this analysis: architectural artist impressions are rendered in an overly utopian style representing the most favourable features such as happy people, blue skies, lots of trees and green space—everything is perfect.

Sydney 2000: Stadium Australia

Stadium Australia, the main venue for Sydney 2000, was planned following its successful 1993 bid, with construction beginning in September 1996 and finishing ahead of schedule in February 1999.

Designed by Populous (then HOK Sport) with Bligh Lobb Sports Architecture, the stadium originally seated 110,000 spectators and incorporated early sustainability features such as rainwater harvesting and passive ventilation.

Crucially, it was built on a heavily contaminated brownfield site at Homebush Bay, previously home to abattoirs, military depots, and industrial waste, making it a landmark urban remediation project. The original artist’s impression released in 1996 showed the stadium embedded in soft landscaping and retained green mounds—features that vanished during the extensive earthworks and temporary stand installations that followed.

Beijing 2008: The Bird’s Nest

The Beijing National Stadium, commonly known as the Bird’s Nest, was the architectural centrepiece of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Designed by Herzog & de Meuron with artistic input from Ai Weiwei, construction began in December 2003 and concluded in June 2008. Situated on a greenfield site in Beijing’s north, the project cleared low-rise housing and farmland.

Early renderings promised a harmonious integration with parklands and cultural axes, aligning with Sasaki’s master plan that envisioned a sustainable, civic-oriented legacy. 

While the stadium has hosted events like the 2022 Winter Olympics ceremonies and occasional sports and cultural gatherings, its regular usage has been limited, and it has become a symbol of the Olympic “white elephant” problem. The Bird’s Nest exemplifies how utopian visual narratives often obscure the social and environmental costs of constructing entirely new Olympic venues on undeveloped land.

London 2012: London Olympic Stadium

The London Olympic Stadium, home to the 2012 Summer Games, was constructed on a heavily contaminated brownfield site in East London’s Lower Lea Valley, an area previously home to derelict warehouses, scrapyards, and light industrial estates.

Following London’s successful bid in 2005, planning commenced swiftly, with construction beginning in May 2008 and finishing in March 2011. Designed by Populous, the stadium featured a modular design intended for partial deconstruction post-Games—a key part of the bid’s sustainability narrative.

Early artist impressions depicted a light, adaptable structure surrounded by waterways, parklands, and thriving public spaces. While the stadium was indeed delivered with a smaller footprint and lighter structural frame than predecessors, the reality of legacy use has been more complex: conversion costs for West Ham United’s tenancy exceeded £300 million ($ 627.28 million) and surrounding parklands have undergone multiple redevelopment cycles. Still, the reuse of a brownfield site and the Games-time public transport integration remain standout features. The stadium’s evolution reflects the tension between visionary renders and the difficult post-Olympic afterlife of major venues, even those built with sustainability in mind.

Sochi 2014: Fisht Olympic Stadium

The Fisht Olympic Stadium, built for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, was constructed on a greenfield coastal site in the Imeretinsky Valley—an area previously composed of wetlands, dachas, and agricultural plots along the Black Sea.

Designed by Populous in collaboration with Buro Happold, the stadium broke ground in 2010 and was completed in late 2013, just in time for the Olympic opening ceremony. Its swooping roofline, inspired by snowy peaks and seashells, was prominently featured in a rather abstract artist impression that showcased the stadium gleaming beside landscaped promenades.

In reality, the site required vast earthworks, large-scale displacement, and environmental transformation to host the Olympic Park complex, with aerial imagery showing significant hardscaping and coastal reshaping not depicted in the public visuals.

Pyeongchang 2018: Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium

The Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium, constructed for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, was a temporary venue built on a greenfield site in the township of Hoenggye, near the Alpensia sports cluster. Designed by Junglim Architecture, construction began in December 2015 and was completed in September 2017.

The up to 35,000 spectators were left freezing without roof or heating. As an extreme example of pop-up architecture, it was used only four times—for the opening and closing ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, before being dismantled in late 2018.

Artist impressions released before the Games included two distinct visuals: one depicting the stadium during its brief period of grandeur, and another showing the landscaped public space that would be remediated post-demolition.

This dual-rendering approach marked a rare acknowledgement of a venue’s planned impermanence, a strategy aimed at avoiding the white elephant syndrome that has plagued past Olympic host cities. While the temporary design successfully limited long-term underuse, it also highlighted how even “honest” renderings can idealise outcomes, depicting a seamless transition to legacy uses that, in practice, are often delayed, altered, or fall short of community expectations.

Tokyo 2020: Japan National Stadium

The Japan National Stadium, constructed for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics (held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), was built on a brownfield site in central Tokyo—the location of the former National Stadium used for the 1964 Olympics.

After Tokyo was awarded the Games in 2013, an initial design by Zaha Hadid Architects was selected but scrapped in 2015 due to escalating costs and public backlash.

A new, more restrained timber-and-steel design by Kengo Kuma & Associates was approved later that year, with construction beginning in December 2016 and finishing in November 2019. The new stadium incorporated extensive natural materials and greenery, aligning with a visual narrative of environmental harmony seen in artist impressions that emphasised timber textures, rooftop vegetation, and integration with the surrounding cityscape.

Of the seven Olympic stadium projects analysed, Tokyo’s renderings are arguably the most authentic—faithfully representing the materiality and design language of the completed venue. Yet even here, the limitations of a single, polished image remain: what a single render can never fully convey are the invisible environmental and social costs embedded in its construction, nor the longer-term challenges of integrating even a modest stadium into an urban fabric already under pressure.

Olympic bedazzlement is not just a tactic, it is a pattern

The stadium render for Victoria Park is not an outlier, it belongs to a lineage of Olympic visual seduction. Across more than three decades of Olympic history, the pattern is consistent: artist impressions are among the earliest and most persuasive tools used to cultivate public support for mega sporting venues and infrastructure.

The stadium render for Victoria Park is not an outlier, it belongs to a lineage of Olympic visual seduction

 From Beijing’s Bird’s Nest to London’s adaptable stadium and Pyeongchang’s pop-up architecture, each render offered an idealised vision, sunny skies, ample trees, smiling crowds, a seamless integration with nature and city life. In practice, each required extensive demolition, excavation, or long-term reconfiguration.

This recurring gap between future urban imaginaries and built reality is what we term bedazzlement: the strategic use of seductive architectural imagery to present utopian urban futures as a “done deal”,  while suppressing public scrutiny, alternative designs, or meaningful community engagement. It is a visual form of greenwashing, where the illusion of sustainability is sustained through compelling aesthetics, not factual substance.

Brisbane’s choice to build an entirely new stadium on greenfield parkland sets it apart from global best practice

Brisbane’s choice to build an entirely new stadium on greenfield parkland sets it apart from global best practice. All but six other host cities used already existing stadiums that either remained unchanged or were upgraded.

Milan, hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics, will celebrate the centenary of San Siro Stadium, a venue built in 1926. Before that, Turin’s Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino was already 73 years old when it hosted the 2006 Games. In Rio 2016, the iconic Maracanã Stadium was 66 years old at the time. Brisbane, by contrast, is opting for a high-carbon, high-cost new build in one of its last remaining inner-city green lungs.

This scenario is far from hypothetical. The Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi, Russia, irreversibly damaged the Western Caucasus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Despite its original pledge to reduce pollutants by 80 per cent, Rio 2016 failed to clean up Guanabara Bay, and also caused large-scale deforestation and wetland destruction.

Fragile alpine forests were cleared for the Pyeongchang 2018 ski slopes. Brisbane now risks joining that ignoble list.

Premier Crisafulli regularly repeats his new Olympic slogan: “Now, let’s get on with it.” But on with what, exactly?

A stadium imposed on heritage-listed parkland, justified by a carefully curated artist impression that omits scale, clearance zones, topographic reality and carbon cost?

In a move that should concern every Queenslander, the Premier has now introduced legislation to Parliament that will override 15 state planning laws to fast-track Olympic venue delivery—including the Environmental Protection Act, the Planning Act, the Queensland Heritage Act, the Local Government Act, and the Nature Conservation Act. If we allow ourselves to be bedazzled today, Victoria Park in 2032 may look more like a heat-blistered concrete pan than the leafy sanctuary promised. Brisbane still has time to choose which picture becomes real.

“A utopian image does not guarantee a sustainable legacy.”

A utopian image does not guarantee a sustainable legacy. The Victoria Park stadium render pretends there is no alternative. But multiple lower-impact alternatives exist such as nearby brownfield sites, and they do deserve proper assessment: Northshore Hamilton, Woolloongabba, Albion Park, Doomben, and Mayne Yard, all of which are previously developed sites with far fewer environmental trade-offs and cultural impacts than building on inner-city parkland. Reusing or upgrading existing venues, as most recent Olympic host cities have done, would also offer a significantly lower-carbon, lower-cost path forward.

Communities seeking to preserve Victoria Park are using the time they have left to resist the sleight-of-hand that is Olympic bedazzlement. Community groups such as Save Victoria Park have seen through the smoke and mirrors of these seductive visuals and imagine an urban future grounded in honesty, respect, and genuine sustainability. They argue Brisbane does not need another render. It needs a reckoning, with its climate obligations, with its cultural responsibilities, and with the power of visual persuasion to obscure inconvenient truths.

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