This photographic project explores the legacy of the 2004 Athens Olympics; eight years after the games came to a close. Only three of the Olympic stadiums, built at a cost of $15bn, are currently in public use, the remaining requiring an annual $100m in upkeep costs.

The significance of this desertion is exemplified by the country’s huge national debt (one of the highest in Europe) and highlighted by its recent social unrest against national austerity measures, which include a 30% cut in annual sports funding. Greece has a population of 11 million, six million of which live in its capital Athens. However, due to the local popularity of football and basketball, the government and International Olympic Committee has had little success in attracting residence from other sports.

Lessons on Olympic legacy, highlighted by the Barcelona and Sydney Games, were shadowed in Greece’s case by pressures of completion and a delayed three year construction timeline. Caused by political intervention and government elections, this rush for completion allowed little thought for post-games usage and trebled its construction budget.

Olympic construction highlights the continued trend of public borrowing for structures that have limited shelf life. They come at a huge cost to limited natural resources, requiring energy consumption and carbon emissions that defy the intelligence and understanding we’ve been fortunate enough to develop.

In the years of sovereign debt crisis, these white elephants of peer pressured national pride, much like the factory shells in defunct industrialised cities, are testament to humanity’s continued failure to comprehend inevitable entropic social change. We need to consider the possibility that all human construction in the future could have the technology of functional adaptation.