The Platypus. No really.
The actual headline announced today was the IOC’s naming of Tokyo as the host city for the 2020 Olympic Games. The 2020 Tokyo games feature a stadium designed by Zaha Hadid architects. Of the 3 stadium proposals, the Hadid stadium was by far the most innovative, ambitious and undoubtedly the most expensive of the three. Photos of the other 2 stadiums associated with their host cities are shown below.
The other 2 cities in the running were Madrid, Spain and Istanbul, Turkey.
You may ask how does the platypus come into play here? Take a look at the skull of a platypus and compare it with Hadid’s winning stadium design. (Photos of the platypus taken from Emily Graslie’s Youtube channel the Brain Scoop.)
They are scarily identical. Here is the stadium again for comparison.
I wonder if Hadid studied Natural History as an elective at Uni or if she ever visited the Chicago Field Museum’s collection of platypus specimens (I would tend to doubt it) but the similarities between the stadium and the animal make an interesting point of how nature or the freaks of nature like the platypus can be used to inspire great design.
If you are interested, I am including the original Brain Scoop video which highlights the platypus collection if you are interested in learning more about these creatures.