The true spirit of Olympic Games

During the last 72 years the Olympic Games have crossed the European history. This project was born with the aim to know what happen to the buildings that the athletes leave empty once the lights and splendors of the Olympics went out. The state of maintenance of these districts born from wild speculation and often turned into dormitories with no services or residential luxory. Seven steps for seven olympics. From the economic crisis of 1929 that gave birth to the Nazi - fascism until the current crisis of the Euro zone and European Union.

Seven Olympic villages to tell the most important events of the last 50 years of European history. Berlin (1936), Rome (1960), Barcelona (1992), Sarajevo (1984), Helsinki (1952), Munich (1972) and Athens (2004).
The project was born in 2009 after a photo reportage about Greek Olympic village, built –up in 2004 in Trakomacedonia, four years after the Greek entrance into the euro zone.
Athens, the city where the Olympic Games were born about two century ago, lost the new millennium Games edition and in 2004 it didn’t want to lose his new challenge: to prove his greatness to European countries. For this reason Athens creates massive sportive centres, most part of them unused after the closing ceremony Games. The village, realized with 350 billion euros to host about 17 thousands athletes, one year later the closing ceremony games, it was transformed in a dormitory town, set about 20 km from the city centre. Only five years later the village is falling apart. The flats where the Olympic athletes lived, today provide accommodation for working – class families and naturalized Greek immigrants. Greek Government in harness with Oek ( Houses institute for workers) assigned the Village flats to families who asked a council houses.
The allocation was made through a big lottery. However, the whole housing estate results completely out of touch with capital and surrounding villages. Five years later Greek’s Olympic village still remains a foreign body, in which to live it is not easy. There are less busses, no underground nor tram line. Houses, rushing built up, need often maintenance and all projects to realize common areas and services, like: banks, public offices, malls, and a big church have not been realized yet.
From here on, it was born the curiosity to see what has happened in the other countries who hosted the Olympic Games. The project starts with the German Olympic village, built up close Berlin in 1936. Before that year in fact Olympic athletes were hosted in hotels or campuses. It was only in 1932, for the Los Angeles Game edition, that IOC (International Olympic committee) introduced the Olympic village among the compulsory requirements to host the Games for the nominated countries. Unfortunately nothing remains of Los Angeles Olympic Village so the first existing Olympic village is that of Berlin, even if it remains only ruins. The Berlin Games are best remembered for Adolf Hitler’s failed attempt to use them to prove his theories of Aryan racial superiority. As it turned out, the most popular hero of the Games was the African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in relay and long jump.
The true spirit of the Olympic Games project sets itself up to two objectives. On the one hand: to try out the state of maintenance of the Olympic Villages and the level of social integration of the families who live in those areas. On the other hand, telling through pictures and audio interviews the current European history from these strange corners, built up in the middle of nowhere of the outskirts. So it has been in 1960 for the Rome Games. Here the Olympic village was built during the Dolce Vita years. The Rome Olympic Village was born between two historical districts: Flaminio and Parioli, and it was built up on a place where, until 1958, there were only tents and shacks of Second world war displaced persons. The work is revolutionary. Italy is in full boom and Rome host the Games. A few years after the closing ceremony Games the village was transformed into a residential district but during his 50 years of life the area has been left in a state of neglect and lost its characteristic splendour. The village cross the ’70s , it knows student actions and bad patch during the ‘80s when his squares and streets were used by prostitutes and heroin addicts.
It is only at the end of ‘90s that the Olympic village knows a sort of new birth. In 2005 the municipality of Rome has decided to realize close the village the Auditorium of Renzo Piano. The decision has taken to retrain the whole area but the only effects that the Auditorium has been caused at the Village is the high price of flats.
In 1992 Barcelona hosts the Games. It is the first Games editions post cold war. The Berlin wall felt down in 1989 and Spain hosts the Olympic Games absolutely for the first time. The city, disposed to change face, used the funding to transform his identity. Towers, new avenues, a jewel sportive centre in the middle of Montjuic and 7 kilometres of beach, that until 1992 didn’t exist. Popular architects starts a competition to reshape the Catalan city injured by Franco and Barcelona’s skyline change forever. 18 architects design the Olympic village. 11 residential blocks, for the first time not assigned to working class families, but sold on property market one month before the opening ceremony Games. In 2010 Barcelona Olympic village has no more borders. Around the district there are schools, buildings, hotels, malls, restaurants, offices, bars. A very efficient underground, buses and tram lines or bicycle paths. Every kind of service makes the new district, built up close to the beach, the coolest area where to live. But 1992 is as well the year during that the most violent and bloody ethnic cleansing war go off in Yugoslavia. And while Barcelona is celebrating his stylistic rebirth hosting XXVth Games edition, Sarajevo is under siege. The Olympic village built up in Mojmilo in 1984 to host the winter Olympic Games knows ethnic cleansing horrors. All the buildings fall apart under the advance of heavy and light artillery. In 1996, one year after the end of the war, Barcelona fund the rebuilding operations of Sarajevo Olympic village.
In this very long stretch of European history we couldn’t forget Munich 1972.
The Munich Games will be forever associated with the ghastly acts of terror carried out by terrorist group Black September. On 5 September, eight Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village, killing two members of the Israeli team and taking nine hostages. In the ensuing battle, all nine Israeli hostages were killed, as they were five of the terrorists and one policeman. In defiance of the terrorists, the IOC ordered the competitions to resume after a pause of 34 hours. At the end of this memory route of the Games there are Helsinki Olympic village. An important Games edition developed in 1952 during the Cold War. Israel and the Soviet Union join the Olympic Games for the first time. Part of Finland is still occupied by Russian army and for this edition of the Games the authorities decide to built up two different Olympic villages: one in Otaniemi for Soviet Union and Eastern Europe teams. The other in Kapyla for western countries teams.
The true Spirit of the Olympic Games project wants to tell the recent European history through the Olympic village. Each Olympic village is connected into a specific social- economic and cultural contest. The project is intended to describe Europe from these unusual corner: from the Olympic villages houses and squares, born out of nowhere and transformed, Berlin except, into garden suburbs for worse off or working class families. For this reason the project is composed of two different point of views: portraits in the houses and wide shot photos of the Olympic village places. Each chapter of the project will be completed with audio interviews. A sort of life stories of the real and unknown protagonists of the Olympic Games.