At the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, the low and high points of the British athletics campaign occurred on consecutive days in two very different arenas. On August 22 thousands of British spectators gathered at the finish line to celebrate Paula Radcliffe's anticipated victory in the women's marathon. The roofless arena offered little protection from the afternoon sun, its capacity of 30,000 was small by modern standards and its seats were hard and uncomfortable. Yet the Panathinaiko Stadium (pictured) is one of the most iconic Olympic venues. Carved out of white marble in 329BC to host the Panathenean Games, the Panathinaiko hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896. In March this year it staged the handover of the Olympic flame to the organisers of the Beijing Games.

Radcliffe famously never made it to the stadium that day. But British disappointment did not last long. The next day Kelly Holmes won the first of her two gold medals. This time the venue was the OAKA Stadium, the showpiece of the Games: a 72,000-seat stadium whose redesign by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was so ambitious that it was completed only hours before the opening ceremony, at a cost of €220 million (£176 million) and the lives of five construction workers. Whether the OAKA will be around to host another Games 3,000 years from now is debatable. Calatrava's iconic roof now hovers incongruously over a north Athens suburb, the arena playing host to the occasional football match and George Michael concert. The contrasting fortunes of the two Athens arenas highlight a question faced by all

Games organisers. What makes a great Olympic building?

The Olympics has given us some fantastic-looking buildings: Günther Behnisch's steel and acrylic canopy for the 1972 Munich Games; the Olympisch Stadion in Amsterdam, designed by Jan Wils, which won the gold medal for architecture at the 1928 Olympics. Beijing, with its Herzog & de Meuron-designed Bird's Nest, certainly seems to be striving for iconic status. But there have been some turkeys, most notably Montreal's stadium, which wasn't finished until ten years after its 1976 Games.

How to get a new job

In the words of a once-popular reggae song: You can get it if you really want it, so step up to the challenge

Background

• Large-scale prospects

• History makes ways for the future

• Creatures put building on hold

• A world of difference

Related Internet Links

• Snakes & Ladders

• Graduate jobs

• Search for an internship

Graham Watts, the chief executive of the Construction Industry Council who captained the British sabre team at the Barcelona Olympics, emphasises that the desire for an iconic arena should not over-ride more practical considerations. “Of course everyone wants the stadium to have impact and a great design,” he says. “But it's got to be buildable, maintainable and everything has got to work.”

Ideally, the stadium should have a sustainable use. Both Sydney and Athens struggled to fill their Olympic venues after their Games. The London 2012 showpiece stadium, according to its principal architect, Rod Sheard from HOK Sport, will respond to the “challenge of creating the temporary and the permanent at the same time” with a demountable structure that will shed the top tier and 55,000 seats after the Olympics, leaving a more manageable 25,000-seat stadium.

Both the Sydney and Athens Games were audited for their environmental impact by Greenpeace. Sydney passed; Athens failed. Turin, which staged the 2006 Winter Olympics, was the first to use the EU eco-management and audit system and passed with flying colours. Sue Riddlestone, the director of BioRegional, an environmental group that worked both on the bid for the 2012 Games and with the Olympic Development Authority on its sustainable development strategy, is optimistic that London will be the greenest Games so far. She points to the soil-washing machines that are decontaminating the site, the commitment to reducing the use of water and the high re-use or recycling of construction materials.

“I think at the moment things are looking good but there's no room for complacency,” she says.

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO