London Aquatics Centre

Hadid designed the Aquatics Centre in 2004, as part of London's bid for the 2012 Olympics, taking the fluid geometry of moving water as her formal starting point: a single steel roof, engineered with Arup and shaped by parametric modelling, sweeps in one continuous double curve from a low point at the diving pool to full height over the two fifty-metre competition pools, its underside lined with 30,000 sections of Red Louro timber. Ground was broken in July 2008 and Balfour Beatty completed the aluminium-clad, 3,200-tonne roof structure in July 2011, at a final cost of £269 million against an original 2005 estimate of £75 million. For the Games themselves, temporary steel-framed spectator wings, wrapped in white PVC, raised seating to 17,500 and hid much of Hadid's roofline; they were unbolted and removed once the Paralympics ended, and the building reopened to the public in March 2014 with a permanent capacity of 2,800, the wave now visible on all sides for the first time. It remains the sole swimming venue from the 2012 Games still in continuous public and elite use.