Abstract

Egypt’s government has expressed its commitment to bidding for the 2036 Summer Olympics in 2022, to be hosted in the New Administrative Capital (NAC). Knowing that new sustainability requirements for the Games of 2036 were set up by the International Olympic Committee to become “climate positive,” Egypt will have to take into account strict environmental regulations and put the reduction of greenhouse gas on its agenda. The aim of this research is to evaluate to what extent the stadia of the International Olympic City, currently under construction in the NAC, can rise to the challenge of long-term sustainability. Based on the analysis of up-to-date relevant literature and field visits, well-defined strategies are proposed for the optimization of the reuse of sport venues. The research investigated concepts of flexibility, reversibility, and transformability throughout approaches of adaptive reuse, circular economy, deconstruction, and disassembly. These strategies can create useful and sustainable legacies for stadia and prevent them from becoming “white elephants” in the aftermath of the Games. The researchers concluded that decisions in the early stages of the architectural design process are crucial to reducing the stadium’s life cycle impacts and that the venues under construction in the NAC today will need to come a long way in order to comply with sustainable standards.