The winning project of the Japanese national stadium by Zaha Hadid

In the competition for the new Japanese national stadium, the jury led by Tadao Ando decided to award first place to the London studio of Zaha Hadid, whose futuristic project won out in the final round among the remaining ten competing designs. Alongside Ando, the jury also included London architects Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. The new building is set to be constructed on the site of the current stadium designed by Mitsuo Katayama in 1958, which, apart from hosting the Asian Athletics Championships, primarily served athletes during the Olympic Games in 1964. Currently, Tokyo is one of the candidate cities for hosting the Olympic Games in 2020. The new stadium, with a capacity of 80,000 spectators, is expected to be one of the main trump cards in deciding about the possibility of hosting the XXXII Olympiad (the decision will be made on September 7, 2013, in Buenos Aires). Zaha Hadid's construction, costing 130 billion yen (over 32 billion crowns), easily surpasses the budget of the highly acclaimed Olympic Stadium in Beijing, which cost 'only' 8.5 billion crowns.