Baghdad Gymnasium
Le Corbusier · Baghdad, Iraq · 1980
The Baghdad Gymnasium was designed by Le Corbusier after a 1950s commission for an Olympic-scale sports complex but remained unrealized during his lifetime. The gymnasium portion was eventually completed in 1980 using the architect’s plans, creating a large concrete sports hall characterized by monumental structural forms, ramps and a distinctive external profile. Its unusual delayed realization makes it one of the rare Le Corbusier projects completed posthumously. The building is important both as modern sports infrastructure in Baghdad and as a complex case of authorship, adaptation and construction across radically different political periods.