London 2012 Games Basketball Arena

The Basketball Arena was one of the largest temporary venues ever delivered for an Olympic Games, designed to host up to 12,000 spectators during the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The challenge was to create a structure of significant scale (30 metres high and spanning 96 metres), while ensuring it remained lightweight, efficient to construct and fully demountable after the Games.

Beyond performance, the façade needed to deliver visual impact. The venue had to function as both a sporting arena and a key architectural feature within the Olympic Park, capable of transforming through light and colour during events.

We designed, manufactured and installed the tensile fabric façade system, wrapping the steel frame in approximately 20,000m² of translucent white membrane.

The fabric was carefully tensioned across the structural frame to create a three-dimensional, undulating surface—giving the building its distinctive sculptural appearance. During daylight, the translucent material allowed natural light to filter through, while at night it acted as a projection surface for dynamic lighting displays, transforming the arena into a large-scale illuminated landmark.

Each element of the system was engineered for efficiency and repeatability, supporting rapid installation within a compressed programme. The lightweight nature of the membrane reduced structural demands while maintaining durability and performance across the duration of the Games.

The completed arena became one of the defining visual features of the Olympic Park, its glowing white façade earning comparisons to a giant illuminated form within the landscape.

Despite its scale and presence, the structure was designed with its end-of-life in mind. Following the Games, the arena was fully dismantled, with materials reused or recycled in line with the wider sustainability ambitions of the Olympic programme.

The project stands as a clear demonstration of what tensile architecture can achieve at scale: combining speed, flexibility and visual impact in a way that traditional construction cannot. It highlights how temporary structures can deliver world-class performance while leaving a minimal long-term footprint, engineered for both the moment and what comes after.