Gymnastics? Check. Pole-vaulting? Check. Architecture? Architecture? Believe it or not, that field—as well as town planning, “mixed sculpturing,” compositions for orchestra, and various other creative subcategories—was part of the Summer Olympics from 1912 until 1952. Entries were required to be sports-related, hence the preponderance of designs for swimming pools and stadiums, a symphony with heroism as its theme, and a drawing of a rugby match. Architectural Digest showcases some of the great Olympians of design.

PAYNE WHITNEY GYMNASIUM, YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
For this Gothic-style sports complex, eminent American architect John Russell Pope (1874–1937) took home the silver medal in architectural design at the 1932 Los Angeles Games. The majestic stone building, completed that same year, was funded by Manhattan millionairess Helen Hay Whitney, in honor of her late husband, Payne, a member of Yale’s class of 1898. Pope’s best-known work is the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., a city in which he also designed the west wing of the National Gallery of Art.

PLAN FOR A SKI STADIUM
The gold medal in architectural design at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was given to Austrian architect Hermann Kutschera (1903–1975). His winning entry was Sprungschanze mit Stadion, a sports venue that incorporated a dramatic ski jump. Among Kutschera’s later works, all in Vienna, are the Jubiläumswarte viewing tower (1955), Hotel am Kahlenberg (1963), and the Alfred Klinkan-Hof apartment complex (1973–75).

MARINE PARK, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The judges of the 1936 Berlin Games awarded American architect Charles Downing Lay (1877–1956) the silver medal in town planning for Marine Park in Brooklyn, a 1,500-acre recreation facility on Jamaica Bay. Lay’s entry was casual by today’s standards. As described in a New York Times article celebrating his win, “A printed notice arrived from the American Olympic Committee asking for material of an athletic or outdoor nature. Mr. Lay said he remembered the Marine Park plans and decided they might as well be submitted.” And so he simply mailed them to Berlin.

OLYMPISCH STADION, AMSTERDAM
Constructed as the centerpiece of the 1928 Amsterdam Games, Olympisch Stadion was the gold-medal-winning work of Dutch architect Jan Wils (1891–1972), a founding member of the De Stijl movement and greatly influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wils accented the low-slung, redbrick structure with a slender tower that was topped with the first-ever cauldron designed to cradle the Olympic flame. Today the building is Olympic Stadium Amsterdam, a combination museum and sports-and-entertainment facility.

VOLKSPARK, NUREMBERG, GERMANY
Parks department director Alfred Hensel (1880–1969) received a gold medal in town planning at the 1928 Amsterdam Games for his creation of a public sports park in the German city of Nuremberg. Among the buildings erected on the lakefront site was a Bauhaus-style stadium by architect Otto Ernst Schweizer (1890–1965). Today that facility is home to the 1. FC Nürnberg soccer team.

ATHLETIC CENTRE, KEMI, FINLAND
Finnish diver Heikki Ilmari Niemeläinen (1910–1951) took home a medal from the 1948 Olympics in London—but not in the imagined category. Niemeläinen was a practicing architect as well, and though his performance in the ten-meter platform event was disappointing, he ended up with a bronze for town planning, thanks to his design for an athletic center replete with pools and a tennis court. He wasn’t the only architect among the Finnish athletes: A member of the Finnish sailing team was Viljo Revell, a former assistant of Alvar Aalto, who went on to design Canada’s Toronto City Hall in 1965.

PLAN FOR A STADIUM
Sportsman Dezsö Lauber (1879–1966) was a spectacular Hungarian athlete, excelling in everything from cycling to tennis, which accounts for his appearance at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. So was a fellow Magyar, Alfréd Hajós (1878–1955), a swimmer who won two gold medals at the 1896 games in Athens. Lauber and Hajós also were architects and together presented a plan for a stadium at the 1924 Paris Olympics. The silver-medal-winning entry was a palatial structure that could be anything from a museum to a railway station. A monumental frieze emblazoned its columned façade, and its roofline bristled with rearing horses.