Olympic unsustainability

Even before the opening ceremony, the XXV Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina had already set a record — in fact, two. They were the first to use the word sustainability over a hundred times in their bid dossier, and the first to promise they would “adapt to the territory, not vice versa,” at least according to top regional and national authorities. Let’s try to assess how much of that promise matches reality, starting in Milan. Early last summer the Olympic Village, designed for the former Porta Romana rail yard by the American firm SOM, sparked heated debate. To many it looked less like a model of future living and more like a Soviet-era gulag. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course; the extra €40 million added to the initial €200 million price tag is rather less so.

Also in Milan, the PalaItalia Santa Giulia — the ice-hockey arena designed by David Chipperfield Architects with Arup — has taken shape. It is a 40-metre-high, 200-metre-long cylinder of steel, concrete and glass, packed with building systems that will require permanent maintenance. The project has been dogged by controversy over technical compliance, challenged by the Italian Olympic Committee and by international experts. Originally budgeted at €180 million for 16,000 seats — fully financed by the German multinational CTS Eventim — the funds proved insufficient, and public money had to step in. In the end, the arena will cost between €250 and €270 million — roughly €17,000 per seat. Naturally, the project is carbon-neutral on paper: solar panels, geothermal energy, LEED and BREEAM certifications. What no one can say is how many tonnes of CO₂ were generated by its embodied carbon — the grey energy required to turn sand and minerals into buildings.

Move on to Cortina and, on one of the final hairpin bends, the new bobsleigh track suddenly comes into view. This is the very track the IOC had rejected, recommending instead the use of existing facilities in Innsbruck or St. Moritz. Italian authorities insisted on building a national track anyway, arguing that otherwise the Games would be “irrelevant.” Hence this sinuous ribbon of freshly poured concrete: more than €80 million initially budgeted, nearly €120 million spent — for a sport practiced in Italy by fewer than 100 athletes, about €1.2 million per athlete.

Before the Games began, the Milan–Cortina Foundation claimed that 85 percent of the infrastructure was already in place or would be temporary. According to Mountain Wilderness Italia, that is far from the truth. Not only venues but also roads, parking areas, road widenings, clear-cutting and kilometres of pipelines have been built from scratch. Snow-making infrastructure in particular consumes vast resources at a time when the planet is overheating — to the point that scientists say winter sports in the Alps have only a few decades left. In this sense, the PalaItalia and the new Cortina bobsleigh track perfectly encapsulate how the state has interpreted sustainability: reshaping the landscape through excavation and construction of oversized facilities destined from the outset to be underused. Eight hundred century-old larch trees were felled in Cortina, with the promise they would be “offset” by 8,000 saplings planted around the new track — the replacement for the 1956 one, closed in 2008 because it was too expensive to maintain. Just like the Cesana Pariol track built for Turin 2006 and shut down in 2011. Before leaving Cortina, it is worth visiting Fiames, site of the other Olympic Village. Unlike Milan’s — which will become student housing — the Fiames village consists of 377 temporary units to be dismantled after the Games. Total cost: €38 million. Spread over the 17 days of the event, that is more than €2 million per day, not including disposal costs. The two villages represent opposing approaches to the same idea of sustainability: on one side, a permanent complex built with construction techniques straight out of the 1970s, guaranteeing astronomical maintenance costs; on the other, a hugely expensive temporary project that will largely go unused. Banca Ifis estimates the overall economic impact of Milan–Cortina at €5.3 billion, with €319 million generated in Milan alone (Confcommercio). Impressive figures — even though the state has invested €3 billion in road infrastructure to improve the 400 kilometres between the two cities, compared with €700 million for the railways. Three billion in asphalt, half a billion in tracks: another testament to Olympic “sustainability.”

And what about landscape architects? They did what they could — stone cladding in local materials, new planting, contextual insertions. In most cases, however, this amounts to environmental cosmetic work needed to pass impact assessments. The underlying reality remains: fragmented ecosystems, sealed soil, barriers for wildlife, energy-hungry structures. All of it far removed from the Alpine architectural tradition, which relied on local materials, morphological adaptation, biodegradability and minimal impact — huts, refuges and infrastructure that fit into the landscape instead of trying to dominate it, accepting its limits and its timescale. Everything the Olympic mega-machine, already behind schedule before it even began, makes impossible.

After watching the opening ceremony of Milan–Cortina 2026 — a live broadcast by RAI that will go down in history — we celebrate sport, thrill at the medals and take pride in an Italy that keeps its promises in terms of image and international standing. Yet from an architectural, environmental, economic and cultural perspective, none of the promises has been kept. A double betrayal. Because, unlike past editions, these are the Olympics of the 2030 Agenda. This time we knew about climate change, the environmental crisis, the unsustainability of the Olympic model and the fragility of winter sports.

We chose to ignore what we already knew. Were there good reasons for doing so? Undoubtedly. The belief that building something new is always a sign of progress. The conviction that an international opportunity is an economic gain, regardless of how it is exploited. The idea that simply claiming to respect the environment is enough to make it true. The notion that repeating the word sustainability hundreds of times is the same as putting it into practice. In short, perhaps we persuaded ourselves we were living in The Matrix. But we are not — and no Neo is coming to set us free.

Opening image: Olympia delle Tofane, Cortina d'Ampezzo. Courtesy Milan Cortina Foundation