Six years after the CTV Vancouver set, I was back at the Olympics — this time for BBC Sport at Rio 2016. Different broadcaster, different hemisphere, same brief. Build a studio that carries two weeks of continuous Olympic coverage and doesn't have an off day.
What the brief asks for
An Olympic set has to feel anchored in the host city and work as a television environment for hours every day. Frame the presenters. Take live crosses. Handle changing daylight through a window. Read instantly as "the Games" to someone watching at home. And keep doing all of it for a fortnight.
A studio built around a view
I organised Rio as a single circular gesture — curved sofa, ring desk, glossy timber stage, all aimed at the wraparound window onto Copacabana. The Olympic rings sit in the window itself. A sculpted ribbon, in the Rio 2016 colours, anchors the side wall. Every camera angle puts the city behind the presenter.
Where it sits
Rio sits inside the same broadcast run as Education Nation, the CTV Vancouver set and Wimbledon. Those jobs are where I learned to make a set perform for a camera. That instinct carries straight into the stadium work I do now.