REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, TOKYO — Japan’s government on Tuesday (22/12) settled on a slimmed-down Olympic Stadium for Tokyo’s 2020 Games after a brouhaha over a 2.1 billion US dollars price tag forced Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to scrap the design by star architect Zaha Hadid this past summer.

As cited in The Wall Street Journal, the new design replaces the dramatic but hard-to-build arches envisioned by Hadid with a lower-key look and wooden materials. Architect Kengo Kuma’s design, chosen from two finalists, features abundant trees and other greenery.

The contractor behind Kuma’s design, Taisei Corp., said it could finish the building by November 2019 at a cost of about 1.2 billion US dollars, just within the government’s budget requirement. Taisei’s plans for meeting the targets received high marks from the Japan Sport Council, which evaluated the two designs and made a recommendation that was approved by Abe’s government.

The U.K.-based Hadid blasted the choice in a statement, saying she received “shocking treatment” because Japan didn’t consider her own recommendations for cost savings.

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