Couldn't find the Olympic 2012 thread but this looks good

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From http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/17/olympics2012.regeneration

Olympics will leave east London an open space to rival Hyde Park

Plans for a concert field, wetlands, meadows, and fitness trails in Lea valley

An artist's impression of the London 2012 Olympic stadium. Photograph: Press Association

After the athletes have gone and the flame has moved on, the biggest public park in more than a century will emerge from the site of the 2012 Olympics in London.

Its designers hope the 270-acre park (pdf), which will open in 2014, will capture the spirit of the great Victorian parks whose creators hoped to counteract the urban squalor of the industrial revolution.

The new park will have two rather more modern goals: to teach people to reduce their carbon footprint and to fight obesity. This week the organisers of the London games will unveil the initial plans for the park, which its designers claim will rival Hyde Park as the capital's greatest open space.

Acres of asphalt laid to withstand the 4 million visitors expected during the games will be torn up and replaced with meadows, wetlands and lawns, including a concert field with room for 50,000 spectators. George Hargreaves, the American landscape architect hired to design the park, said: "It will characterise east London and give the area an equal weight to the west. This will be east London's equivalent of Hyde Park."

A 120-metre wind turbine will loom above orchards and vegetable patches designed to encourage local food production, while a miniature biomass power station will run on willow cut from the park's wetlands. Steep scrambles and jumps will be incorporated into paths to help strollers fight the flab.

The Olympic park will cost the public purse £200m and will be built around the valley of the river Lea which runs from the Eurostar train station at Stratford to the Thames. At almost two and a half miles in length, the park will follow the form of the narrow river valley and will be fringed by intensive developments of offices and thousands of homes that are planned for the area after the games.

The athletes village will be transformed into almost 4,000 apartments which will overlook the new landscape. The park will be narrow and at one point just a couple of hundred metres across. This is partly down to the need to sell on much of the land which has been decontaminated especially for the games, to recoup costs for the event which have risen to £9.3bn.

Officials admit building a park is essential for increasing the value of neighbouring developments, a strategy that informed the development of Regent's Park by John Nash in the early 19th century. The Olympic Delivery Authority said the as yet unnamed Olympic park will be the largest new urban open space since the Victorian public park movement which produced grand spaces including Birkenhead Park by Joseph Paxton in 1847 and the Derby arboretum which opened as Britain's first public park in 1840. Until then, places like Hyde Park and Regent's Park had remained royal hunting grounds.

"They were built as part of the outcry about poor public health and squalor that flowed from the industrial revolution," said John Hopkins, head of parklands at the ODA. "The new agenda at the beginning of the 21st century is about achieving sustainability. Health remains a concern, particularly obesity."

Set among orchards, allotments, hazel coppice and nut groves, a "one planet pavilion" will demonstrate ways of living a low energy lifestyle. On the other side of the park, a miniature biomass power station will show how local energy generation can slash carbon emissions. The designers are planning to build a network of fitness trails, and outdoor gyms with equipment embedded in the landscape to encourage visitors to take more exercise. Steep 10m drops into the river valleys will be fitted with climbing walls and canoes will be for hire on the seven miles of waterways.

More conventional exercise activities will include a cricket pitch, novice and extreme mountain bike trails and horse-riding. A 10-acre grassland will be available for impromptu football kickabouts.

The plans seem a long way from fruition as scores of diggers clean up land contaminated with oil, diesel and low-level radioactivity from the area's postwar history as one of London's most intensive industrial areas. Specialist teams have swept the site for unexploded second world war bombs and are tackling an invasion of Japanese knotweed, a plant that grows so aggressively it can crack concrete.

"We plan to create another world with wetland habitats and broad expanses of meadows in the centre of east London," said Hargreaves. "This will be one of the great parks of London. I want it to become a park which gives a memory of London hosting the games.

"We are looking to achieve a grand scale and some epic spaces where you will sense the echo of 250,000 people moving through the park."

He intends to plant alders, dogwoods and willow to attract kingfishers and herons to the wetlands and traditional London trees, such as planes and limes, in the upland areas. The Olympic stadium will be scaled down to 25,000 seats and is likely to remain in use for sport, with Leyton Orient, the League One football club, the frontrunners to use it as a home ground. Just outside the park, the Olympic swimming pool will be available for public use.

Once the park is built, in 2014, its management will be taken on by the London Development Agency and the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, which owns part of the land. A detailed plan is due to be submitted this year.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2008/03/page_011_500x532.jpg

Some good ideas there, I hope the canoe hire isn't killed by health and safety/insurance nonsense.

Not sure what the different colour schemes signify.

I see there's a cricket pitch on the Hackney side,it would be great to have one on the Newham side as well. That way it would be feasible for two county cricket teams to play regular games in the Olympic Park.

Hope we see more greenspace corridors to the south as well.

I see there's a cricket pitch on the Hackney side,it would be great to have one on the Newham side as well. That way it would be feasible for two county cricket teams to play regular games in the Olympic Park.I don't think that cricket pitch will have stands - it's more for grass roots stuff than county cricket.

Also, what two county cricket teams would use a cricket stadium? Essex and Kent one presumes, as they would be the top teams that have decent access to the area that don't have either the Oval or Lords already. However, Colchester and Maidstone are pre-existent and just as accessible to the fan base as Stratford - there's no point in building stands there for county cricket when clubs that would use it would only use it half their home games at most, as they already have their own stadia and we don't need another top notch cricket stadium in England, least of all in London.

I don't think that cricket pitch will have stands - it's more for grass roots stuff than county cricket.

Also, what two county cricket teams would use a cricket stadium? Essex and Kent one presumes, as they would be the top teams that have decent access to the area that don't have either the Oval or Lords already. However, Colchester and Maidstone are pre-existent and just as accessible to the fan base as Stratford - there's no point in building stands there for county cricket when clubs that would use it would only use it half their home games at most, as they already have their own stadia and we don't need another top notch cricket stadium in England, least of all in London.

Newham is Essex, Hackney is Middlesex.

I agree that a proper cricket ground is not sensible but plenty of counties play games in a number of venues around their county using temporary stands.

It would be a good opportunity to bring more top class sport to the area and a great day out for all the family in one of the most accessible parts of the London/Essex/Middx.

Essex used to play a few games a year at Southend till recently. The outfield was surrounded by low grassy banks on which loads of chairs were put out when county cricket was played there. That fitted in well in the park environment there and would do here I feel.

The rest of the time it could be used for grass roots cricket.

Newham is Essex, Hackney is Middlesex.I know, however Middlesex will stay at Lords, which is huge and more central in the county - it won't use it.I agree that a proper cricket ground is not sensible but plenty of counties play games in a number of venues around their county using temporary stands.fair enough - I'd be happy to see that, however I can only imagine Essex doing it, maybe Kent (I know it's in neither).It would be a good opportunity to bring more top class sport to the area and a great day out for all the family in one of the most accessible parts of the London/Essex/Middx.indeed - it's a shame that the West Ham plan has seemingly fallen through as well (and why is the stadium only going to have 25000 seats when they are done with it - I'd have gone for a 40k large stadium - I guess it's to do with West Ham taking it over City of Manchester style not working). With the prospect of the 2016 soccer world cup, it would have been good to have one of the Stadia at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford (especially as many British stadiums don't meet FIFA requirements for businesses having stuff outside the stadia).
Essex used to play a few games a year at Southend till recently. The outfield was surrounded by low grassy banks on which loads of chairs were put out when county cricket was played there. That fitted in well in the park environment there and would do here I feel.

The rest of the time it could be used for grass roots cricket.that's a plan and a half!

2018 World Cup isn't it?

This needs to go in the London 2012 thread. Once construction officially starts in August we can have a thread in the Construction forum.

I think this is a great idea and hope that it will work out. Although I am always wary of when political ideals are involved in the construction of parks. A park to teach people to reduce their carbon footprint?

I also wonder how well they will line the river and build bridges. Most cities screw this oportunity up these days, with either cheap and nasty builds or leaving the river to be as natural as possible - which I think is fine in a country setting, but in an urban setting it just looks ugly.

A great place for inspiration is what has been done to the small river in San Antonio.

Other fantastic small rivers worthy of emulation would be in Strasbourg and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Has anyone photos of the Lee River?
Is this a fast moving river or static with little flow?

Great thread- thanks for starting it- something tells me that it will be The Park that will steal the limelight

The park is a great idea.

I just hope the funding for aftercare is enough to the place justice. If the park is supposed to become the Eastern Green Lung of London (in comparison to Hyde Park) then it needs the same level of funding.

However as Hyde Park is funded by direct Grant from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) through an executive agency I really doubt whether the Lee Valley RPA and the ODA could provide that funding.

This is actually quite a sustainable use of the land after the Olympics. It's good to know that they actually have a decent plan for post-2012.

London 2012 (aka London Olympics) thread is that way =>> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=235902

There are several artist's impressions of the new park in this week's Newham Recorder, but just one on their website.

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/content/newham/recorder/news/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=newsNEWHAM&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsnewham&itemid=WeED26%20Mar%202008%2009%3A06%3A15%3A910[/URL]

Sorry guys didn't realise the pics are already covered in

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=235902

I know the ppl managing the delivery of the park and I'd have to say I don't think the public could ask for a more committed and creditable team. They don't have a lot of money to play with but they're very dedicated to delivering not only quality for the park but also delivering the legacy side of things.

Thanks for that Urban Spurt - very reassuring to hear! :)

Hey guys

Darljoe etc. check out the ODA planning meetings which have pdf's with renders of various parts of the park. e.g. bridges.I think there was even a concept of what area around the north of the velodrome would look like.

An old photomontage with several venues incorrect, but at least gives an idea of how much green space this Park will have. Lush!

http://www.aecom.com/media/5374.jpg

I'm waiting for a final render of the park with all the new venues!

Are we sticking general construction photos of anything non-venue specific in here?

The southern entrance for workers:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/2853942132_02ae1eaa56_b.jpg

Part of the Olympic Route Network, which will ferry VIPs and athletes around the Park, is currently being used to store bit and bobs.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2853094177_9027e5d5cd_b.jpg

Going by the pics of this area and what I've said in other threads before, that I think the skyscraper clusters of CW and Stratford will eventually join together. I do not think this will be the Hyde Park of east London. But rather what Central Park is to New York, this be London's equivalent.

This park is by far the most appealing part of the transformation of the area. But I don't believe that transformation will stop once the Olympic venues have all been built. I'm not necessary saying there will be grand master plans on the scale of the Stratford or CW's developments. But there will be a lot of opportunity for organic growth in this area.

If the park really is constructed to a high standard, people will want to live and work next to it. If I were young and rich I'd start buying up land and properties in Poplar and surrounding areas right up to Stratford right now while I still could. This whole area will become very desirable and expensive in the future.

Can't wait to have a walk/cycle round this whole area. No doubt this will be linked up with the wider greater London plan of having more forests and parks all throughout eastern London.

New Olympic Park architecture unveiled as utilities work powers ahead
(http://www.london2012.com/news/media-releases/2008-09/new-olympic-park-architecture-unveiled-as-utilities-work-powers-ahead.php)Olympic Delivery Authority
18 September 2008

New concept designs for a key piece of utilities infrastructure in the Olympic Park have been unveiled by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) along with new photos showing the progress being made in constructing the new utilities networks.

Concept designs have been unveiled for a pumping station to be built in the south of the Olympic Park that will collect, convey and discharge foul waste from the main venues and buildings in the Olympic Park in Games-time, and from the legacy venues and residential developments after 2012. The pumping station is being built by Barhale Construction and a planning application has now been submitted which includes early design images by John Lyall Architects.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3007/2867205991_0f4a33763a_b.jpg

The designs for the pumping station show a circular building to reflect the engineering used in the sewer shafts beneath the ground. The circular shaft structure will rise out of the ground to form the outer shell of the pumping station building with images applied to the exterior of the building to depict the history of the London sewer network and its Victorian origins. There are also plans to include a green roof on the pumping station building to help enhance the ecological value and biodiversity of the Olympic Park site by attracting local wildlife.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3243/2867210505_852276fc53_b.jpg

New photos have also been released showing construction work on the pumping station where work is well underway to construct the foundations for the building and build a 12.5m wide shaft beneath the ground. The shaft will connect the pumping station to 1.8km of foul sewer tunnels which have now started to be constructed throughout the Olympic Park.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/2868042094_4b859170e5_b.jpg

ODA Director of Infrastructure and Utilities Simon Wright, said: 'Design excellence runs through the heart of the project, and the early designs in place for the pumping station show that we can use innovative architecture in functional buildings in the Olympic Park, not just the world-class sporting venues we are building.

'With work on the foundations of the pumping station well underway and tunnelling work now starting on the sewer networks, we are firmly on track to deliver a backbone of new utilities infrastructure for the Olympic Park.'

The pumping station and foul sewer networks will be operational by the end of 2009.

ODA backs Arup bridges in face of criticism
(http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3123042&c=1&encCode=00000000018230e5)19 September 2008
By Marguerite Lazell

Olympic Delivery Authority planning officers have recommended that three bridges designed by engineer Arup be granted planning permission, defying strong criticism from Cabe and Newham Borough Council over their design quality.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/j/r/j/Bridge_HO7_ready.jpg

Ahead of a dedicated planning committee meeting next Tuesday, official papers revealed that the committee — comprising ODA board members, local councillors and independent members — had been urged by officers to approve the designs. This is despite local authority Newham describing them as “featureless, lacking in architectural character and visual interest”.

It also follows a reiteration of quality concerns about the bridges voiced earlier this year by Cabe — which has now joined the council in complaining of a lack of detail in the applications.

Architect and bridge designer Julian Hakes of Hakes Associates, who has seen the designs, called on the committee to reject them.

“They should be revisited with more consideration,” he said.

“While it might cost, if they don’t [revisit them] this sets a benchmark and bland is the way forward.

“They [the designs] are just a few hundred metres from the main stadium, they’re not site-specific at all. It’s very disappointing.”

Hakes’ comments echo those of Newham council’s development control committee, which also expressed concern over how the pedestrian route on the bridges would link to the tow path below.

Meanwhile Cabe, which first published its design review of the bridges in March this year, said: “We continue to have serious concerns about the way the bridges have been procured and dealt with in planning process terms.”

Arup declined to comment. However, in the official papers it insisted the design met the requirements of the Olympic Park’s urban design and landscape framework, adding that “comment from Newham that the proposals lack design quality is not supported”.

In his report, the ODA’s planning officer said: “While officers acknowledge, and to some extent share, the frustrations of Cabe and LB Newham with respect to the lack of full detail to be discharged at this stage, [the planning delivery team] is satisfied that with supporting material and appendices there is sufficient information to adequately assess the look and feel of the bridges.”

Good lord... I've just read that...the ODA is only organisation that is failing to understand the role of iconic architecture.

Not just iconic but something interesting and challenging, Arup should be ashamed of themselves for designing that very standard concrete bridge, what were they thinking??

The standard pedestrian ones throughout the Park aren't much better. Slowly but surely the vision of a new beautiful urban park is eroded away.

Who do you really we should blame? I dont think it's Arup fault, they respond to the ODA requirements.
Dont want to over-generalize but transport infrastructures aesthetics are the last thing on people's mind in this country. Take all the recent tram schemes, the vehicules, stations etc are all ugly or bland at best.

Who do you really we should blame?

I don't really blame anyone, it's a whole mix from the public bemoaning politicians from overspending, developers for not having enough vision, the Olympics itself for giving such a strict deadline to get everything finished, oh it's a mix of everything.

enough vision, the Olympics itself for giving such a strict deadline to get everything finished, .

i think there should be an 8 year difference between the start of build and then of one olympics...if that makes sense. basically london 2012 would have been anounced in 2004

i think there should be an 8 year difference between the start of build and then of one olympics...if that makes sense. basically london 2012 would have been anounced in 2004

2005, not 2004!

2005, not 2004!

no i ment as wel as a hand over there should be the announcement of the host city in 8 years, so athens in 2004 would have been when london found out we got the 2012 games

What, so change it to have the vote behind closed doors with no TV cameras and then announce during the closing ceremony who had won? Nice way of making millions of people from the losing cities feel really crap during what ought to be a happy event, wouldn't you say?

The Olympic bidding process is highly political and essentialy divisive, the opposite of the atmosphere you seek to create during a closing ceremony. That idea is a non-starter Djay, sorry.

The announcement of the next host city is not just that. It's an IOC conference event a year after the previous Games to discuss how they went, what the next host could learn and a general administrative get together for endless business meetings. The culmination is the bidding cities presentations and final vote and announcement of who is the future host of the Olympics. Whilst I agree maybe a little bit more time is needed between announcement and opening ceremonies, it would be quite a logistical nightmare to have all this business during an Olympic Games.

However, I do think they should give the host cities more time to sort everything out.

So, bring it forward 2 years and have the Summer Olympic venue during the IOC conference after the Winter Olympics. And likewise, choose the Winter Olympic Venue during the conference after the Summer Olympic event.

Not only will that give the cities 2 extra years to prepare, but it'll also give them 2 Games to study before they have to host it themselves.

It's such a shame those bridges are so bland! Some of the spans on display on Store St are great, and I believe something as simple as an imaginative design for a bridge can do wonders for the lasting atmosphere of an area. The temporary bridges could be a little bit dull but at least go all out on the infrastructure that will be there for decades!

However, I do think they should give the host cities more time to sort everything out.

So, bring it forward 2 years and have the Summer Olympic venue during the IOC conference after the Winter Olympics. And likewise, choose the Winter Olympic Venue during the conference after the Summer Olympic event.

Not only will that give the cities 2 extra years to prepare, but it'll also give them 2 Games to study before they have to host it themselves.

dronkula has articulated what i meant, it would not be hard at all it would require 2 games to be named (for argument 2016, and 2020 during the same conference, and then every four years after that there will be one city announced which would give them 8-ish years to develop.

Is it really hard to design and build more interesting bridges? Yes the cost ' may' be slightly higher but by how much? These bridges are going to be there for a very long time yet we design what looks like a bridge that looks more at home in the 1970's than something of our time and have no sense of celebration or vigour. Have they considered vandalism? Graffiti? In the years following the Olympics these will become victim to such crime and will look like grotty errors of judgement.

The more Olympic projects I see the more I lose faith in the Games it seems like all our venues will be half-arsed cheap affairs.On top of that the opening ceremony will be shit (I cant believe I actually argued otherwise just few months ago!).We just cant do anything properly.

:ohno:

Is it really hard to design and build more interesting bridges? Yes the cost ' may' be slightly higher but by how much? These bridges are going to be there for a very long time yet we design what looks like a bridge that looks more at home in the 1970's than something of our time and have no sense of celebration or vigour. Have they considered vandalism? Graffiti? In the years following the Olympics these will become victim to such crime and will look like grotty errors of judgement.

It does seem really short-sighted. As people have said it would be that much extra expense to refine the design than have a bridge that looks like it belongs as a motorway crossing. Think of the long term . This bridge will be there for at least 50 years. :ohno:

I just think its something they want to get through because they think people won't notice or care. It's projects like this that could of been designed by lesser known designers or architects, to enrich this area with something to be proud of. The attention to detail will make or break this development and I fear we are again being given dumbed down accountant friendly architecture.

why are Newham Council being so weak-willed? And Boris got rid of Design for London. This should be a reminder of what happens when infrastructure bodies (which is basically what the ODA is) are let loose untouched.

Boris doesnt care about design, like the conservatives they are scared of its cost and suspicious of all that spending money on things that actually make peoples lives better.

Some images from the Open House tour. By falling_angel on flickr:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3235/2874871847_765d9092cd_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/2874863169_94dabfc3c8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2874867557_ddbb2e129d_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/2874861073_eb26b8e526_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/2875673528_1d168f2e8c_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/2874824081_bd9ecd18eb_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/2874800893_f541594182_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3075/2875675612_6e89cff3e9_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3108/2874852293_57be33dba7_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3076/2875696766_448029eff0_b.jpg

why are Newham Council being so weak-willed? And Boris got rid of Design for London. This should be a reminder of what happens when infrastructure bodies (which is basically what the ODA is) are let loose untouched.

As far as the Olympics are concerned, Newham probably gets railroaded. The borough is screaming out for quality architecture but it also knows that it's incredibly poor and can't bite the hand that feeds it. (It's been fighting for inner London borough status for years, as this would give it an extra £70m a year.) Go to neighbouring Hackney and there's creativity in the air, which Newham sadly lacks. In it's own study for the Stratford Renaissance Area (ie Stratford!) it admits that despite so many different cultures living in the borough, it lacks a large cultural arts scene.

It's a very old-school Labour-run council, despite a New Labour directly-elected mayor. The area is a mix of white British working class and immigrants from around the world, many living below the breadline. There's a huge transient population that never gets accounted for - council estimates of the numbers of people living in the borough far exceed Government figures. There's a huge number of people in social housing and 60% of private properties are rented out. Unlike say Hackney or Islington, there isn't a large community of media/creative/professional types, or students. As a result, there's not much of an art scene and bad planning decisions have slipped through the net because no one's really interested in pressuring the council. For instance a mediocre block of private flats could bring in council tax, but does nothing for the ambiance of the local area nor the desire for others to move in.

Take a walk along Manor Road from the junction of West Ham Lane - it's the bleakest road ever with huge walls either side. No gardens or greenery, just brown brick walls separating the road from equally depressing brown brick 70s houses.

The council is trying with some schemes but it comes up against so much opposition. I fear that the Canning Town redevelopment will suffer because of the current state of the economy, yet with it's transport links, proximity to Canary Wharf, the o2, City Airport and Stratford it should be a jewel in the crown for the borough. Sadly, Newham Council in the 80s refused to join the board of the London Docklands Development Authority and missed out. Canning Town is now the fifth poorest area in Europe.

It's interesting that two of the best parks in Newham - West Ham Park and the Thames Barrier Park - are run by the Corporation of London and the LDA respectively.

The Olympic Park will bring huge benefits to Newham but the point about the Olympic bridges is that it might also give us what we've always had - a standard of architecture that wouldn't have accepted in other boroughs. Westminster, Southwark, Chelsea, Islington probably would have put their foot down and said try harder.

interesting, thanks

Revealed: how park will look after 2012
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23558562-details/Revealed%3A+how+park+will+look+after+2012/article.do)Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent
22.09.08

This is the first detailed plan to reveal what will happen to the Olympic park after the 2012 Games.

The map shows how the sporting legacy of the two-week long games will be secured with the venues made into sports facilities for all. It also illustrates the sheer scale of the work which will be needed after the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2008/09/sports-minister-backs-games-legacy-campaign-500x795.jpg

The map is part of the formal planning application submitted to local authorities by the Olympic Development Authority.

It comes as the Standard campaigns for action to ensure the 2012 Games deliver a real legacy by involving more people in sport and giving London top quality facilities and easy access to them.

More details will emerge early next year in the Legacy Masterplan Framework. The London Development Agency is responsible for the final plan.

that's excellent thank you

Excuse my stupidity here, but I thought that the Olympic park sat in the borough of Newham the media centre on the map No8 states Hackney..I'm confused

Most of the Olympic Park is in Newham, but some is across the borough lines in Hackney. I believe Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets get a look in too - but don't quote me on that one! They, along with Greenwich, may be Olympic host boroughs but their events may not take place inside the Olympic Park. Someone else on here should be able to set us both straight.

I know that many in Newham were miffed that the borough didn't get a public big screen to broadcast the closing ceremony. Then again, the IOC suddenly changed the route of the torch relay, meaning that much of Stratford missed out! Quelle surprise...

The Lea River is the border between Hackney and Newham, with the stadium in Tower Hamlets and the tennis centre in the north in Waltham Forest.

Greenwich is also an Olympic borough because it is hosting several events.

Boris's advisors want Westminster to become an Olympic borough as well because it is hosting beach volleyball, which if it does means the Olympic budget will be spread even thinner.

Designing the Olympics
(http://danstewart.building.co.uk/2008/09/24/designing-the-olympics/)September 24th, 2008 | by Dan Stewart |

I happened to speak to a source at CABE this week, who told me the Olympic Delivery Authority had given a special presentation to all sorts of CABE types, including many of the commissioners and the 2012 design review panel – and that a number of private “observations” had been made. As it’s unlikely we’ll ever see these reported or revealed, I can offer you something of the flavour of them:

CABE is quite concerned about the ‘dumbing down’ of Foreign Office Architects’ concept designs for the Olympic Park by Allies & Morrison and EDAW. FOA parted ways with the Park’s designers last year, and the designs have changed completely since then. Some of the choicer comments included: “This has been watered down” and “It is so boring now.” This may be of legitimate concern to CABE, but you can’t expect designs not to evolve, and given the budgetary concerns of the ODA it had to have been inevitable that the complex, organic shapes of FOA’s original designs wouldn’t survive. Shame, though.

CABE has already weighed in on Arup’s bridges, but the concern remains that they are deathly dull and, even worse, damned ugly. And there are thirty of them! I hear there was a lot of wincing when the designs were shown. Is there not something that can be done about this?
The Athletes Village is becoming more and more of a concern. Apparently CABE is in a difficult position with this because the 2012 design review panel has been broadly supportive of the designs, but the commissioners think they’re a real disappointment. Some elements stand out, such as AHMM’s Academy and housing elements by DSDHA and Lifschutz Davison Sandilands, but the concerns remain that the quality of what they are going to produce will be fairly low. I suppose the ball is in Lend Lease’s court, but they have bigger fish to fry right at the minute.

On the plus side, the latest designs for Hopkins Architects’ Velodrome and Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre were applauded, and the legacy masterplan drawn up by Allies & Morrison and KCAP is “very positive.” So it’s not all bad news. I did hear something else about the legacy masterplan designs, but I’ll have to check that out before printing it. Watch this space…

totally random post, i was in somerfields earlier and a friend of m ine was flicking through the star newspaper and i caught a glimpse of the olympic stadium as the picture for the small article and the heading was 'olympic toilets will not face mekka' isnt that just a little bit rediculous?

and it probably cost them a million quid to sort that out!

A large percentage of the toilets will not face Mecca, as is law under such large scale public amenities.

what an interesting, yet obscure i'll keep that one locked away for trivial pursuit :P

What a load of trite
Another thing to be scared of
the stadium itself come under Tower Hamlets.....
Run for the hills......its going to be a nightmare, they can barely wipe their backside without having a a reg book to look it up.
That scares the **** out of me
Since when did Tower Hamlet eve build anything of nay substance or for that matter supported anything of nay substance ... they'll put design to one side and cater for all the stupid religious and politically correct requirements.

Ohhh christ I wish I hadn't read that...


A large percentage of the toilets will not face Mecca, as is law under such large scale public amenities.

http://www.cnplus.co.uk/News/2008/09/images_rail_depot_dismantled_on_olympic_park.html

e and cater for all the stupid religious and politically correct requirements.


Good. It's called inclusive design and its the way things work nowadays.

I met someone earlier who's involved with the 3D rendering and CAD work for Allies & Morrison on the Olympic Park. He said he even designed one of the smaller paths that runs through the park... so I'll try and get more info and perhaps a drawing/rendering soon...

I would disagree with you on that comment
inclusive design its basically politicising something that should hold no politics ie design..where do we end politicising Art and Design...lets politicise the Mona Lisa perhaps....
Design should stretch our emotions and get us to break away from our every day rules..we should not impose religious nor cultural rules on design, good design and especially good architecture should be free and not shackled by our limited beliefs and views which in 50yrs time will have no bearing but whose generation then will have to live with.

So my belief is that architecture should be free of cultural restrictions.

Good. It's called inclusive design and its the way things work nowadays.

AND by the way Darjole....
whose LAW ???


What a load of trite
Another thing to be scared of
the stadium itself come under Tower Hamlets.....
Run for the hills......its going to be a nightmare, they can barely wipe their backside without having a a reg book to look it up.
That scares the **** out of me
Since when did Tower Hamlet eve build anything of nay substance or for that matter supported anything of nay substance ... they'll put design to one side and cater for all the stupid religious and politically correct requirements.

Ohhh christ I wish I hadn't read that...

Why does this make any difference to anyone? It may sound stupid to non-Muslims but if having toilets facing the wrong way is going to affect certain people's experience then making sure there are few facing the right way isn't that big a deal is it? It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Beijing went to great lengths to make sure Western visitors felt comfortable and we should try, as far as possible, to do the same. As I said, it hardly means a complete redesign of anything, it doesn't make any difference to you and I, but may make a difference to some of our visitors.

whose LAW ???

Local authorities are duty bound to promote diversity and inclusive accessibility as part of their charter. Because the building of the Park is being paid for by lottery and government money from public funds the ODA comes under that and must cater for all.

It's not just about toilets though, there's a whole host of amenities that must be designed in such a way that they are acceptable; signage in the park must comply with sight laws for the visually impaired, paths must be wide enough to accommodate the disabled, baby changing facilities must be available and washing facilities attached to faith rooms.

Why does this make any difference to anyone? It may sound stupid to non-Muslims but if having toilets facing the wrong way is going to affect certain people's experience then making sure there are few facing the right way isn't that big a deal is it? It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Exactly. Most people won't even know, and because it is being designed in at this stage means it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to the budget. Unlike the Chinese at Beijing, who had to rip out most of their toilets in the Village mere weeks before the Games because they hadn't installed Western style seating toilets.

Why does this make any difference to anyone? It may sound stupid to non-Muslims but if having toilets facing the wrong way is going to affect certain people's experience then making sure there are few facing the right way isn't that big a deal is it? It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Beijing went to great lengths to make sure Western visitors felt comfortable and we should try, as far as possible, to do the same. As I said, it hardly means a complete redesign of anything, it doesn't make any difference to you and I, but may make a difference to some of our visitors.

it sounds stupid to muslims too.

If you say so...

Olympic delivery is East London's regeneration backbone
(http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.showbriefdetail&newsid=11)

Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) Chief Executive David Higgins today said that the progress being made to build new infrastructure and utilities in the Olympic Park is creating the backbone for the long-term regeneration of east London.

Speaking at ‘The Games Briefing’ event in London this morning, a gathering of representatives in the construction sector, David Higgins said:

“While the flagship new sports venues we are building understandably get the most attention, the huge amount of work currently going on to construct new infrastructure and utilities in the Olympic Park is every bit as essential in ensuring we deliver a lasting legacy from the London 2012 Games.

“We are making strong progress in creating the building blocks for a world-class new urban Park. We are building 20km of new roads and more than 30 new bridges to connect the Olympic Park during the Games and create new links between communities in legacy. Work is also underway on a state-of-the-art Energy Centre which, using sustainable technology, will provide power for the Games and support new and existing communities for generations to come. The wider utilities network we are building, including an electrical substation and sewage infrastructure, completes the ‘wiring’ of the park and will leave a backbone of facilities essential for a lasting legacy.”

The infrastructure and utilities work being delivered by the ODA includes:

- More than 30 new bridges and 20km of new roads
- New water, gas, electrical and telecoms networks
- A wind turbine in the north of the Olympic Park to play a key role in delivering renewable energy to the site
- A new electrical substation and electrical distribution network to supply electricity to the Olympic Park
- An Energy Centre and community energy networks to provide efficient power, heating and cooling systems across the site
- A new pumping station and sewer network to collect, convey and discharge foul waste from venues and buildings in the Olympic Park

Construction work on utilities and infrastructure in the Olympic Park is well underway - the outer structure of the electrical substation is taking shape; piling works have started on the foundations of the Energy Centre; tunnelling work has started on the new sewer networks and on the foundations of the pumping station; and the abutments in place for the first permanent new bridges to be built in the Olympic Park.

If you say so...

yip along with the rest of my muslim family.

2012 park to host music festivals
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23563376-details/2012+park+to+host+music+festivals/article.do)Evening Standard
03.10.08

London 2012 chiefs are planning to stage a series of Glastonbury-style openair festivals to breathe life in to the Olympic Park after the Games.

Planners from the London Development Agency will enter into talks with music and arts promoters later this year.

They aim to secure an entertainment licence for the main stadium and use temporary venues such as the basketball arena to host arts exhibitions. The LDA wants to prevent the 600-acre site becoming a ghost town in the two to four years it will take to convert venues for general sports use and build apartments.

Gareth Blacker, the LDA's director of Olympic development, said: "That transition phase will make or break this place."

Speaking at the Games Briefing construction industry conference, he said the park had excellent transport links.

Ownership for 30-40 years will pass to a "special purpose vehicle" answerable to City Hall and the Government.

Should it not come under the Royal Parks control once the Games are over?
Why is there a need for a "special purpose vehicle", which will mean creating a new department, with a number of staff, who will all want decent wages.

yea fair point about the royal parks! the music festival idea should work i know that its worked in munich

Haven't we already got a park for music festivals?

How will they get festivals to come here without taking them from Hyde Park?

There's lots of parks in London that host large music festivals - not just Hyde Park.

Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Reagents Park, Crystal Palace to name a few. In fact, Hyde Park only started hosting major concerts comparatively recently.

Also, the Royal Parks only covers 9 specific parks/open spaces in London - not all of them. The rest (for example Victoria Park which isn't too far away from the Olympic site) are all local government run so there's no reason why the Royal Parks would take over the Olympic Park after the games.

Planting scheme for the Park in 2012. The London 2012 Gardens are a space which will be planted with trees during the Games and left after as a reminder for generations to nuture and enjoy.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/2925900849_87d320b2f5_o.jpg

I can't see the pic, Darj.

I can't see the pic, Darj.

Well it's there.

What, a picture of a red cross with a white background? I can't see it.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/2925900849_87d320b2f5_o.jpg

It's definitely there Jizzy. I think there must be something funny going on at your end.

This is exactly the kind of planting scheme I was hoping to see. Very English Country Garden-esque. I think, in many ways, the flora and environment of an Olympic park defines it as much its architecture. Sydney's native trees, shrubs and grasses, Beijing's pristine wide walkways and Chinese lawns, Athens' 'dusty', hot scheme. Pleased to see this.

BTW Darjole, where is this image taken from?

BTW Darjole, where is this image taken from?

2012 Parklands and Public Realm planning update (PDF) (http://www.london2012.com/documents/oda-planning/parklands-planning-update.pdf)

I would have chosen the wet land concept than parkland, it would have suited the site and probably cost less to maintain. Anyway...we're not going to see the exemplary new town we were promised. Because of cost cuttings but above all because of any lack of idea.

Why are contemporary english gardens so lagging behind those in Europe? Where is the reinvention of the great british tradition?

Hi guys!!!!

Well, I live in Mexico, i have planned to go to the Olympic Games; a friend of mine told me that some travel agencies start to sell the packets for this kind of events 4 years before, actually he bought his packet to go to Beijing in 2004, so he bought it 4 years before

I was thinking that maybe some travel agencies in UK are selling now this kind of packets. Please, if you know something about it, or related with that, tell me and let me know, I really want to go. Please

Cheers

Edgar

Britain goes for gold with 2012 gardens
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5056419.ece)
From The Sunday Times
November 2, 2008
Hugh Pearman

The Olympic centrepiece will showcase five centuries of plant collections from around the globe

A HALF-MILE long botanical garden inspired by Britain’s five centuries of collecting plants from around the world is to form the green centrepiece of the 2012 Olympics.

The riverside rival to Kew Gardens will be divided into four geographic zones, representing Europe and the Mediterranean, the Americas, Asia and the southern hemisphere. Together, they will contain thousands of species, many of them brought back by British explorers and horticulturalists.

The project has been drawn up by Sarah Price, 28, one of Britain’s foremost garden designers.

It will form part of a park, designs for which will be unveiled this Thursday by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) for the site of the games in Stratford, east London. The park, which will remain after the Olympiad for local residents to enjoy, will be about the size of St James’s Park, near Buckingham Palace.

The buildings at London 2012 will not be able to compete with the spectacular venues of Beijing 2008, such as the bird’s nest stadium and the water cube aquatics centre. The parkland, however, drawing on Britain’s world-leading horticultural traditions, is likely to be a cut above the municipal-style layouts at the Chinese Games.

In addition to Price’s gardens, the park will include flowering meadows, thousands of native woodland trees and several hills, similar to Henman hill at Wimbledon, on which spectators will be able to watch events on giant screens.

The ODA and its landscape designers have sidestepped television celebrity gardeners such as Charlie Dimmock or Alan Titchmarsh.

Instead, they have signed up Price, a rising star of the gardening world based in Brixton, south London, because of what they call her “painterly” approach. She does not use decking or water features but instead is a plantswoman in the tradition of great British gardeners such as Gertrude Jekyll or Vita Sackville-West.

Price won a first-class degree in fine art in 2004 and became an under-gardener at Hampton Court to make a living. Soon she took up designing and quickly gained a reputation, winning gold and silver medals at Hampton Court and Chelsea flower shows for the past three years. Her concept for the Olympics, she says, is complex but simple in its impact. “It’s really a giant painting in three dimensions,” she said.

The four zones of the 2012 garden will be separated by bridges across Waterworks River, a branch of the River Lee, which has been made navigable to large barges. It will take visitors through four periods of garden history, inspired by the great British plant collectors.

People will be able to walk from western Europe and the Mediterranean in the 14th-17th centuries, via America in the 17th and 18th centuries, through plants from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand in the 18th-19th centuries, and finally Asia and the Far East in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Britain’s great plant collectors, who followed the country’s trade and empire around the world, included John Tradescant, who gathered fruit trees from the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and his son, also called John, who brought back magnolias and tulip trees from North America.

Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific, brought back hundreds of species, including the caper.

Price is the youngest designer responsible for a major project at the Olympics. She is to oversee the planting under the overall direction of the American landscape guru George Hargreaves, who also designed the open spaces for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Price’s 21st-century botanical garden is understood to be costing £5m of the £200m price of the whole park.

It will run along a widened branch of the river on either side of the park’s main entrance. It will be between the main stadium and the striking aquatic centre designed by the architect Zaha Hadid.

“We have a great tradition of landscape design and garden design in this country,” said John Hopkins, the ODA’s parklands director.

^^ That sounds great - very interesting and different.

The first visible sign of the electric cables that run between the Park and West Ham station along the Greenway being removed. From loopzilla on flickr:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3244/2995257835_332782407a.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/3005440901_4c3902a58b_b.jpg

Another new image? Where are these all coming from?

London 2012 unveils brand new type of park for 21st Century
(http://www.london2012.com/news/media-releases/2008-11/london-2012-unveils-brand-new-type-of-park-for-21st-century.php)6 November 2008

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) today unveiled plans for the London 2012 Olympic Park that will combine centuries of British park design with ground-breaking green technology to create a new type of park for the 21st Century.

The ODA is transforming former industrial land, much of it contaminated through years of industrial neglect, to create 100 hectares of parklands that will provide a colourful setting and festival atmosphere for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and beyond.

Designed by LDA Design.Hargreaves Associates and inspired by the Victorian and post-war pleasure and festival gardens, visitors to the park during the Games will enjoy broad sweeping lawns and footpaths leading down to riverbanks, ample seating and public spaces throughout the park with live screens showing the sporting action.

In legacy the Olympic Park will be a new green space for people and wildlife and will host the London 2012 legacy sports facilities including the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velopark, multi-sports arena and Eton Manor outdoor sports complex.

The southern part of the Park will focus on retaining the festival atmosphere from the Games, with riverside gardens, markets, events, cafes and bars. The northern area will use the latest green techniques to manage flood and rain water while providing quieter public space and habitats for hundreds of existing and rare species from kingfishers to otters.

The ODA is working with the London Development Agency (LDA) to ensure the parklands fit into the Legacy Masterplan Framework - a spatial plan for the development of the Olympic Park site after the 2012 Games.

The Olympic Park will also feature:

A ‘mini-Kew gardens’: the London 2012 Gardens, stretching for half a mile sitting between the Aquatics Centre and Olympic Stadium, will celebrate centuries of British passion for gardens and plants. They will trace the journey of the UK’s plant collectors around the world through over 250 species of plants, trees, meadows and herbs from four climatic zones: Western Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia Minor; The Temperate Americas; The Southern Hemisphere, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; Temperate Asia, including Montane China, Japan and the Himalayas.

An ecological park: nearly half of the park is new habitats for wildlife including wetlands, meadows and ponds. There will be over 700 artificial habitats installed including bat and bird boxes, banks for sand martins and otter holts.

A river park: Over three kilometres of restored and previously inaccessible rivers and waterways, creating sloping riverbanks and new wetlands and five ponds so that visitors will connect the northern and southern parts of the park. Most of the waterways will be lined with reedbeds and newly created slopes down to the river in the northern part of the park will have lawns for spectators with large screen displays.

A smart park: cutting-edge green techniques to ‘future-proof’ the park and surrounding built-up areas against climate change and flooding and a 1:100 year storm. Rain water will be captured through paving and cleansed through a network of ditches, ponds and reedbeds and wet woodlands before being released into the river. Planting designed to create a ‘cool island’ on hot days and over 2000 large trees and other plants to protect people from strong sun and winds. Community allotments, growing and composting will support sustainable living.

A regeneration park: new high-quality green space, open and accessible to all, for social, community and leisure uses in legacy. Footpaths, cycleways and avenues of trees linking the park with existing and future communities during and after the Games which will promote healthy lifestyles.

ODA Chief Executive David Higgins said: 'We will be creating a brand new park, the first in London for many years. It will be a park for the 21st century, setting high standards which combine the best of British park heritage with sustainable living. It will be a fantastic backdrop for the Games and the heart of the new community in the area post-2012.

'During the Games the Olympic Park will create a festival atmosphere space for spectators and provide a fantastic green backdrop for the four billion people watching around the world on TV.

'In legacy the Park will provide new green space for people and wildlife. It will also be designed to protect the area from floods, capture and clean rainwater and create vital and rare habitats for hundreds of species.'

Paul Deighton CEO for LOCOG said: 'We are creating a stunning urban park for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games that will come alive as the centrepiece of our plans in just over three and a half year’s time. The range of settings created within the Olympic Park will enable more people to be part of the celebrations and the action in the summer of 2012 and mean we will leave a wonderful legacy for the residents of East London and the rest of the capital.'

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: 'London 2012 will create the largest new urban park in Europe for 150 years and we are determined to ensure that it is one of the most spectacular.

'These designs represent the very best in urban landscape and will not only make the Olympic Park a destination in itself - creating a fantastic atmosphere during the Games - but also leave a beautiful landscape for millions to enjoy for generations to come.'

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: As a direct result of hosting the 2012 Games, London gets this fantastic green space in the heart of east London - Europe's first new public park for more than 150 years. Not only will this provide a great facility for athletes and spectators to relax in during the Games, I can see this becoming a highly popular attraction with Londoners and tourists alike on a par with the capital's other world famous parks in the centre of the city.'

LDA Design. Hargreaves Associates Managing Partner Andrew Harland said: 'This park will be a wonderful setting for the celebration of the London 2012 Games with a distinct British quality that also meets the ODA’s objectives for sustainability. Throughout the design process we are considering the future so that the park will work for both the Games and legacy. It will operate on so many levels and it’s very exciting to be part of the team responsible for its design, knowing that we will leave London another excellent green space.'

Tom Russell, Group Director for Olympic Legacy at the LDA, said: 'The parkland is a core part of the physical legacy from the 2012 Games and will connect to the Lea River Park to the north and the south of the Olympic site. Our legacy masterplan will enhance what is left after 2012 to ensure it complements the new homes, workspaces and other developments on the Olympic Park site as well as the existing communities living around it. This will help safeguard a lasting legacy for generations to come.'

George Hargreaves, Founder and Design Director of Hargreaves Associates, said: 'We have created two distinct parks through reclamation for the East End. One in the north is highly ecological with biodiversity and sustainability as major goals. In the south we have sought to create a park that is a contemporary cultural expression of the British love of plants from around the world.

'At the end of the day these parks will be considered a success by not only how they celebrate the games but also how they extend a green Olympic Legacy into the future for existing inhabitants and those who live and visit here in the decades to come.'

Janet Paraskeva, Chair of the Olympic Lottery Distributor, said: 'The National Lottery has breathed new life into many great parks across the UK and this fantastic brand new park will help us deliver on our promise to regenerate east London.

'We are all looking forward to the 2012 Games and we are now beginning to see how investing Lottery money in the Olympic Park will bring benefits for generations to come.'

Factsheet
The Olympic Park will include [NB 1 hectare= 0.65 football pitch]:
3 km of restored and accessible previously neglected and inaccessible rivers;

Over 2000 large trees on the concourse and in woodland, including willows, poplars, planes, oaks and limes;

At least 250 species of plants will make up the London 2012 Gardens;
5 frog ponds;

Almost 10 hectares of species rich meadows and lawns;

Over six hectares of woodlands, hedgerows and scrub;

2.1 hectares of allotments in legacy;

Two hectares of reed beds;

Over 700 (nesting boxes and holes for birds and 150 (50 by 2012 and a further 100 post-Games) for bats;

New habitats for species including: otter; kingfisher; grey heron; bee; house sparrow; bat; song thrush; starling; toadflax brocade moth; lizard; black redstart; flower and fungus beetle; frogs, newts and toads; eel; water vole; slow worm; grass snake; linnet; sand martin; swift; invertebrates; and
Two hectares of scrub and brownfield type land for wildlife previously living in the Olympic Park;

102 hectares of open land in legacy, 45 hectares of habitats;

130,000 spectators in the park per day at peak, 11,000 in the spectator lawns and hills.

During Games:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3158/3007281571_1f40b462c8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3273/3007281581_1e9a74070a_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/3007281595_14f1386d3f_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/3007281603_5a828e5af8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3168/3007286307_235cff12bb_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3060/3007286317_158d587b1e_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/3007286327_b71e4f35fe_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/3008130676_5e1cbfddeb_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/3008130698_2cbfe44cdf_b.jpg


After Games (legacy):

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3165/3007281575_07b841e700_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3005/3007281589_9f4e0b77f8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/3005440901_4c3902a58b_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/3007286311_77d88688e8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3056/3007286323_6675452df8_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/3007286331_c3d87d6b2a_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/3008130668_423afa614c_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3153/3008130680_ebed800d50_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3153/3008130690_aac45a6c11_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3139/3008130702_f67ba4f2fb_b.jpg

Good for walking the dog but lacking in any drama
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23582816-details/Good+for+walking+the+dog+but+lacking+in+any+drama/article.do)Rowan Moore, Architecture Critic
06.11.08

London 2012 will be the safety-first Olympics and this will be its safety-first park.

During the Games it promises to be more pleasant than the daunting parade grounds that Beijing offered. Afterwards it will be a nice enough place to walk the dog. But it looks very normal.

It looks professional and competent in the manner of the parks landscape architect George Hargreaves has designed in Dallas and Sydney and Arkansas. It will offer biodiversity and sustainability. Frogs and butterflies and four-legged mammals long absent from these parts are expected to reappear.

This is all fine and dandy and something to be grateful for. But it still feels as if something has been lost since the early days of the Olympic project, when we were offered tantalising glimpses of a landscape that created drama out of the multiple levels that already exist on the site.

The Olympics are an extraordinary project and the Lower Lea Valley is an extraordinary place, but the park proposals look generic, and much like the Hargreaves parks in other cities. There are nods to locality - the flower gardens inspired by English traditions of plant collecting, and re-used industrial materials - but the design does not seem inspired by the spirit of the place.

The park will face some challenges if it is to flourish after 2012. It is squeezed between great slabs of land earmarked for future development, which will lie empty for years before they are redeveloped. Its connections with existing neighbourhoods are indirect. It will take creative effort to attract people there. Above all it should not be ringed with sterile hoardings while we're waiting for regeneration to turn up.

It will also require proper management and upkeep, if it is not to become tatty and neglected. How this is done and by whom, and with what money, has not yet been decided, but we are promised that it will be sorted out in good time.

I'm sorry but again those renders are shockers....el cheapo...I like the idea of the park but the images are ill-conceived and completely devoid of atmosphere. I like the squirrel in the last render though! :)

Good for walking the dog but lacking in any drama
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23582816-details/Good+for+walking+the+dog+but+lacking+in+any+drama/article.do)Rowan Moore, Architecture Critic
06.11.08

London 2012 will be the safety-first Olympics and this will be its safety-first park.

During the Games it promises to be more pleasant than the daunting parade grounds that Beijing offered. Afterwards it will be a nice enough place to walk the dog. But it looks very normal.

It looks professional and competent in the manner of the parks landscape architect George Hargreaves has designed in Dallas and Sydney and Arkansas. It will offer biodiversity and sustainability. Frogs and butterflies and four-legged mammals long absent from these parts are expected to reappear.

This is all fine and dandy and something to be grateful for. But it still feels as if something has been lost since the early days of the Olympic project, when we were offered tantalising glimpses of a landscape that created drama out of the multiple levels that already exist on the site.

The Olympics are an extraordinary project and the Lower Lea Valley is an extraordinary place, but the park proposals look generic, and much like the Hargreaves parks in other cities. There are nods to locality - the flower gardens inspired by English traditions of plant collecting, and re-used industrial materials - but the design does not seem inspired by the spirit of the place.

The park will face some challenges if it is to flourish after 2012. It is squeezed between great slabs of land earmarked for future development, which will lie empty for years before they are redeveloped. Its connections with existing neighbourhoods are indirect. It will take creative effort to attract people there. Above all it should not be ringed with sterile hoardings while we're waiting for regeneration to turn up.

It will also require proper management and upkeep, if it is not to become tatty and neglected. How this is done and by whom, and with what money, has not yet been decided, but we are promised that it will be sorted out in good time.

What is he banging on about? How is it uninspiring, compared to what is there at the moment? I guess he finds Hyde Park boring....

I certainly find it very beautiful; especially compared to the last two Olympic "parks" which were nothing of the sort really. Whether it could have had more "drama", I don't know, I'm no expert in these things. But from what I've seen this excites me more than the venues; this is the best part of the legacy by far.

I agree with the article insofar as it will require "proper management and upkeep, if it is not to become tatty and neglected". But surely that's stating the obvious.

All to often in today's media, you can make a decent living stating the obvious

i find it funny how some think a british olympics will somehow exist without atmosphere.

I'd be really proud if it looked like that in 2012. Does anyone know if there are any good pubs bordering the park? Perhaps in need of renovation? Summer pub grub next to a canal would complete the picture.

It looks good, I hope it makes its way down to Three Mills and that, but I wonder whether it will be maintained as it would seem that the area borders 3 authorities one of which is LBTH, which is sits at the bottom of my list of competent local authorities the other Hackney which is just as bad from what friends tell me and my experience.
You can make something look great for a short time the trick and task is to keep it looking great for a long time.....

Perhaps the LDA will run the park. It runs the excellent Thames Barrier Park in Newham. (Likewise the Corporation of London runs the excellent West Ham Park, also in Newham.)

I'm sorry but again those renders are shockers....el cheapo...I like the idea of the park but the images are ill-conceived and completely devoid of atmosphere. I like the squirrel in the last render though! :)

I love this one. Note the Chinese couple on the right posing for a photo... despite nobody actually taking a photo of them :lol:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/3007286311_77d88688e8_b.jpg

Perhaps the LDA will run the park. It runs the excellent Thames Barrier Park in Newham. (Likewise the Corporation of London runs the excellent West Ham Park, also in Newham.)

Yes the Thames Barrier park is really well kept, your right .. shame that the cafe there employes snails to serve coffee !!!

anyone spot the picture with someone playing with an invisible dog

^^
And just how do you know its a dog? :)

The only invisible dog I can see is on the 11th image. :dunno:

I spotted the Asian couple posing for the invisible photographer :lol:
Why is that woman in pic 3 taking the photo of the back of the girls head?
And who can spot Mr Miyagi in pic 5?

anyone spot the picture with someone playing with an invisible dog

You just made me where's wally my way through all of those pictures :lol:

Are you talking about the woman in the pink flowery top? Looks to me as though she's throwing an invisible frisbee to the bald geezer...

These renders really are laughable. If you like you say it would only have cost them 2k for some proper renders, they are really cutting corners in the places they shouldn't be. This is where they can showcase the designs to the public, the only reason I see for them to be producing naff renders like these, is to try to hide how bad the end result will be.

Gherkin007 - "The only invisible dog I can see is on the 11th image."

I can't see it.

Olympic site pylons pulled down
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7726186.stm)
All 52 pylons are due to be removed by the end of 2008.

Work is beginning to remove the first of 52 pylons that dominate the Olympic Park in time for the 2012 Games.

The electricity pylons will be replaced by two four-mile long tunnels, which will carry the power lines underground at the site in Stratford, east London.

Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) chairman David Higgins said the removal symbolised the "huge change" the Games will bring to east London.

All 52 pylons are due to be removed by the end of the year.

The ODA said the £250m move was vital for the permanent regeneration of the area.

Digging the tunnels for the power lines has created 200,000 cubic metres of material, most of which is being reused in construction of the Olympic Park.
The site will include an 80,000-seat stadium, a 17,500-seat aquatics centre and 3,000-home Olympic Village.

A symbolic removal of the first pylon is due to take place in front of Mr Higgins, London 2012 chairman Lord Coe and Olympics minister Tessa Jowell.

Lord Coe said it was significant that the ODA had reached this point on schedule.

"This is an exciting moment. Already the landscape of the Olympic Park is changing as sports stadia take shape," he said.

"The skyline will soon be transformed for good, leading to a new urban sporting park ready to welcome the world in 2012 and beyond."

Great! If theres one thing i hate the most, its pylons.

Great! If theres one thing i hate the most, its pylons.

I find them beautiful !!!! :)

Two pictures taken this weekend

A ballet of cranes...so pleasing in these tough times.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/3037788487_b169091a15_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/3037788765_8e78a4cec2_o.jpg

Stunning, thank you

Broadgate Tower looks fantastic there!

It's amazing seeing the stadium come along so well! Imagine that same view in 4 years time!

In the first pic, is that the dome of St Pauls between T42 and Broadgate Tower, and between them, the yellow crane on the left, and the frame of the stadium stands on the right?

yeah must be

Where are the viewing corridors when we need them :nuts:

And a few others picture, also taken this weekend

Works are on the way for the wide steps in the foreground behind the hoardings.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3023/3039844079_313920d658_o.jpg

Westfield Stratford going up
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/3040682236_343e16553c_o.jpg

And view south-west towards CW, with the residential towers u/c and externally completed
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/3039844053_1353f5f043_o.jpg

I don't know if anyone is eco minded. but look at the eigth image in the legacy mode......

You don't get birch trees growing in what is effectively mudflats given that the River Lea is a tidal one at this point........

Another point, there is very little that will grow on mudflats and when the tide is out for 12 hours all there is going to be is brown mud....... no the pink flowers and green grass that those images are showing!!!

A little pedantic i know but come on LOCOG get it right!

^^ I'm sure i read they were putting up dams/locks etc. to stop it from being tidal.

^^ I'm sure i read they were putting up dams/locks etc. to stop it from being tidal.

They are building a lock in the Prescott Channel further south so they can control the tide within the Olympic Park. This will allow boats to bring in material for construction as well as maintain water levels during and after the Games.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3023/2408827698_c48b055657.jpg?v=0

howdy all, i cant wait for all this to be done. Was wondering if anyone has a map of the overall olympic village that is placed on say a google map just so i can see how close it gets to Bow area/vicky park... im just interested to see how large an area it is taking up.

howdy all, i cant wait for all this to be done. Was wondering if anyone has a map of the overall olympic village that is placed on say a google map just so i can see how close it gets to Bow area/vicky park... im just interested to see how large an area it is taking up.

try the ODA planning website. should be plenty over there

Lovely November panoramas on the 2012 website:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3215/3063724060_b517d72a83_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/3063724050_3e4c28b460_b.jpg

Media Centre:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3228/3062878181_ed8f0c13b3_b.jpg

Energy Centre:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3006/3062878177_21face36b3_b.jpg

.....an immense site. Thanks for reposting them here.

This gives an immense sense of scale of the Park.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/3080387127_df92f3c958_b.jpg

^^That's the River Thames

The green bit at the top.

Virutally all the pylons inside the Park boundaries have been removed now. The ones that run down the Greenway towards West Ham are going down this weekend. I reckon all of them will be gone by the end of next week. Changing times!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3155/3087460378_4c9562b389_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/3087434656_c4b8b279ef_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3097/3086568825_655e925d7d_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/3086560845_e856bb0b4d_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3089/3087397294_f8344b2790_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3289/3087392310_d524a5836d_b.jpg

This one on Manor Road is next to go.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/3087388404_3e05837888_b.jpg

It'll make the site a whole lot better without the pylons, great pics.

What's the block of flats with the multicoloured balconies?

What's the block of flats with the multicoloured balconies?

Icona, it was completed 2007 or sometime around then.

...thanks. They look good.

Jason Bruges Studio and Martin Richman win Olympic bridges competition

Jason Bruges Studio and artist Martin Richman are to create up to 12 bridges and five underpasses in the Olympic Park in east London after winning the Olympic Delivery Authority’s commission for the work.

The pair saw off competition from an eight-strong shortlist also featuring Tonkin Liu and Haque Design & Research to win the commission, worth £24 000.

The bridges and underpasses are to be designed by architect Allies and Morrison, but Jason Bruges Studio (whose submission is pictured) and Richman will work on the final detailed stages of design.


The structures will be built for the 2012 Olympics, but will endure beyond the games as part of the event’s legacy.

Jason Bruges says of the brief, ‘We had to be very openminded and flexible and work backwards.’

ODA chief executive David Higgins says, ‘We have selected two hugely talented artists for this commission, and their winning artwork proposals offer an exciting glimpse of how we can bring to life the bridges and underpasses in the Olympic Park.’

Jason Bruges Studio and Richman will now work with the ODA and Allies and Morrison to further develop their concept designs.

from designweek

Here are the concepts:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3086/3097647679_e140f0c166_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3166/3097647693_8b2a66db94_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3122/3097647703_7dede7d412_o.jpg

DULL!!! :ohno:
They are plain bridges, with no features other than a coloured light...WOW
We are screwing this up big style. The Logo is awful, the stadium is cack, the other temporary & reduced scale building lack any quality/imagination. Why did we bother?

The government wants to spend money on infrastucture to boost the Economy. But on the otherhand tries to cut costs of the olympics at every turn. It's hardly selling the sustainability/legacy cause when stuff built looks so crap, at least they should be easy to take down. The more I read/see the plans/progress on site the more I despair.

Did Westfield design the whole olympic park along with there drab new shopping centre?

We are screwing this up big style. The Logo is awful, the stadium is cack, the other temporary & reduced scale building lack any quality. Why did we bother?

I don't why you bothered to write a comment like that when it's all completely wrong.

DULL!!! :ohno:
They are plain bridges, with no features other than a coloured light...WOW
We are screwing this up big style. The Logo is awful, the stadium is cack, the other temporary & reduced scale building lack any quality/imagination. Why did we bother?

The government wants to spend money on infrastucture to boost the Economy. But on the otherhand tries to cut costs of the olympics at every turn. It's hardly selling the sustainability/legacy cause when stuff built looks so crap, at least they should be easy to take down. The more I read/see the plans/progress on site the more I despair.

Did Westfield design the whole olympic park along with there drab new shopping centre?

yawn.

the bridges are average...the "add some colourful lights to make it interesting" concept is appalling

I don't why you bothered to write a comment like that when it's all completely wrong.It's his opinion, how is that wrong?

The stadia are ok and the logo is rubbish. It looks like its been designed by a 17 year old on speed.

As for the bridges, they seem okay, but until proper renders are produced, it's impossible to tell.

It's his opinion, how is that wrong?


His opinion that the Games are being screwed up is wrong. They aren't.

Still his opinion Darjole. I know most on here only believe in free speech as long as opinions reflect their own.

By the way, although its the wrong thread, I'm slowing warming to the aquatic centre design now. Lets hope there are no more redesigns of the stadia though.

Still his opinion Darjole. I know most on here only believe in free speech as long as opinions reflect their own.

When an opinion is based on untruths whatever is said will be incorrect, free speech or not.

Games preparations are on time and on budget. The IOC and all the sporting bodies are 100% happy with the design of the venues, temporary and permanent. I'm afraid skyscrapercity.com moaners aren't part of the approval process so, well, their opinions count for nought.

the bridges are average...the "add some colourful lights to make it interesting" concept is appalling

Didn't designers only just win the competition to design the bridges? I highly doubt they'll look anything like these in reality, they are only 'concept' renders.

awful. What concept? some lights placed in obvious places. I do wonder how these competitions are won and with such lame ideas too.

I don't why you bothered to write a comment like that when it's all completely wrong.

Sorry for having an opinion. I'll agree with everything you say next time.
Liking a logo is a matter of opinion. My view of the logo is shared by a majority of the public.

Below sums it up....one stadium is an amazing structure that was original, inspiring and instantly recognisible the other is hosting the Olympics in 2012.

http://www.enerpac.com/files/imagecache/projects_max/projects/Beijing.jpg

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/o/u/v/Stadium_39_WEB.jpg

I can't believe this the best my country can do. Sorry for having higher aspirations than some of you. But hey...we're on budget....whoopy!

One's permanent, the other isn't. I can't believe some people are still comparing these two as though they're equivilents.

Only the last two Olympics have had truly iconic stadiums in recent years. And the Aquatics Centre and Velodrome designs, as well as the huge urban park and the atmosphere it will create will more than make up for this. Beijing's design was magnificent, but it was in the middle of a cold concrete plaza. We're building a real park for a real festival. And besides, if you want iconic look at the Dome, Lords, Wembley, the rowing lake with Windsor Castle in the backround etc, London won't let the world down in that regard.

None of Wimbledon's courts are iconic or particularly pretty on their own but it's still unsurpassed as an event in the tennis world because of the quality of the sport inside the courts and the atmosphere inside and outside of them. I reckon, from everything I've seen, our Olympics will be like that on much bigger scale. Or a better analogy would be Sydney 2000; still the greatest Olympics in my lifetime, but unlike Athens or Beijing I can't remember what any of the venues looked like from the outside apart from the stadium and even that was pretty conservative design-wise.

Perhaps (actually there's no perhaps about it) this is the wrong forum to say this, but people are putting too much emphasis on what venues look like when deciding whether 2012 will be a success or not. The Sydney example shows this perfectly.

You're being unduly negative in my opinion. I know it's your opinion and I'm fine with that, but I really believe what happens in 2012 will change your mind. :)

Sorry for having an opinion. I'll agree with everything you say next time.
Liking a logo is a matter of opinion. My view of the logo is shared by a majority of the public.

Below sums it up....one stadium is an amazing structure that was original, inspiring and instantly recognisible the other is hosting the Olympics in 2012.

http://www.enerpac.com/files/imagecache/projects_max/projects/Beijing.jpg

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/o/u/v/Stadium_39_WEB.jpg

I can't believe this the best my country can do. Sorry for having higher aspirations than some of you. But hey...we're on budget....whoopy!

Difference being - and it's a big difference - is that Beijing only had this until it won the right to host the 2008 Olympics:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44586000/jpg/_44586251_footballstadium416.jpg

Put simply, London is blessed with sporting infrastructure that Beijing simply didn't have. And, in my opinion, the Beijing Olympic stadium looks like a pile of crap in the day time.

Below sums it up....one stadium is an amazing structure that was original, inspiring and instantly recognisible.


So? Didn't make the Beijing Games any more atmospheric and fun, did it?

As everyone said, using comparisons of Olympic stadiums to gauge how successful an Olympic Games is going to be is a useless exercise; London is getting fantastic venues in a fantastic park setting as well as using existing fantastic icons for hosting its events. Having a temporary stadium that uses minimal amount of steel as well as designed for the athletes first and isn't simply a design statement over substance isn't going to mean the world looks on London's Games any less than they did with all the other hosts.

You missed China's human rights record. oh and we have a better flag.

This is an architecture forum? I think the design's put forward inparticular for the main stadium, but also for all the other new structures are beyond lame. The fact Britain has so many other great sporting venues only serves to further highlight there lameness. Thats all.

I bet if the steel was a bit chunkier you'd all have loved it though.

Having a temporary stadium that uses minimal amount of steel as well as designed for the athletes first and isn't simply a design statement over substance isn't going to mean the world looks on London's Games any less than they did with all the other hosts.
i thought the stadium was going to be a football stadium after the games

No.

Olympics to sprint ahead with workforce of 6,000
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/09/olympics-2012-workforce)Robert Booth
The Guardian, Friday 9 January 2009

The construction workforce for the 2012 Olympics in London is to double to 6,000 in the next 12 months in a move that ministers hope will offset widespread redundancies in the building industry caused by the economic downturn.

The acceleration in work on the east London site comes with the start of buildings including the velodrome, media centre and a 10,000-seat handball arena. Work on the roofs of the main stadium and aquatics centre, the two centrepiece venues, will also start this year and mature trees will be planted on the Olympic park.

But the increase in manpower comes amid fears of insolvencies among contractors that could still knock "the big build" off course, despite some work being ahead of schedule.

David Higgins, the chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority, warned that bankruptcies are "an obvious risk" to the programme. "Where you get caught is if you have a big exposure to one or two organisations that get themselves seriously into trouble," he said. "We are taking as many checks as we possibly can."

The authority has contracted more that 800 firms to carry out £3.5bn of work and has reduced its payment times in an attempt to stave off potential financial problems among the companies. Olympic officials believe main contractors on the principal facilities such as the 80,000-seat stadium and aquatics centre are well-financed, but insolvency among smaller firms working on the games is a concern.

"The Olympic park is already Europe's biggest construction project and 2009 will see a huge acceleration in activity with all major construction projects under way," said Higgins. "The delivery of this unprecedented project has already created more than 3,000 jobs and the increase in work this year will see our workforce double, creating thousands more jobs and providing a shot in the arm for the economy ... The creation of jobs in traditional trades such as carpentry and bricklaying, together with our focus on training, mean we will also help contribute to a lasting legacy of a newly skilled workforce to continue delivering projects around the country."

In the busiest phase, next year, there will be 9,000 workers. This year the most obvious progress on a project that is twice the size of Heathrow's Terminal 5, delivered in half the time, will be the erection of the roof structure on the main stadium which will be visible from central London. That project is currently three months ahead of schedule, but others appear less secure.

Funding from banks and private developers has yet to be agreed on the athletes' village and a £95m bailout from the government to keep foundation works going will run out in March. A deal with the Australian developer Lend Lease is expected to be announced by then, but Olympic organisers believe there will have to be more taxpayers' money invested in the £900m project, with the possibility that it could be totally publicly funded.

The authority also faces a decision over whether to build a temporary venue for shooting at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich or to use existing facilities at Bisley in Surrey or other sites within an hour's drive of the Olympic village. It emerged from an audit of proposals by the accountancy firm KPMG that the original plans were on course to cost more than allowed in the authority's budget.

At the northern edge of the park, work is due to start on the foundations of the velodrome following a long clean-up of the ground, which used to be a rubbish dump. The velodrome has been designed with the input of Chris Hoy, the triple gold medal-winning cyclist.

By July this year, construction will have begun on the new perimeter security fence and the refurbishment of the waterways which criss-cross the park will be complete.

Away from the east London campus, construction will start on the whitewater canoeing venue at Broxbourne on the edge of the Lee Valley regional park in Hertfordshire.

Boris Johnson backs plan for university on Olympic park site
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23618913-details/Boris+Johnson+backs+plan+for+university+on+Olympic+park+site/article.do)Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent
14.01.09

PLANS for a university on the site of the London Olympics will take a step forward next month with the launch of a viability study backed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.

It is hoped that a top British university will agree to establish a campus in the Olympic Park as a flagship legacy scheme.

Olympic chiefs have asked the Higher Education Funding Council for England to draw up plans for a college to make the commitment to the East End.

Talks have already been held with the Russell Group, which represents universities that receive two-thirds of research funding in the UK.

Universities thought to be interested in a move include King's College, Imperial College and University College London. Loughborough University is also involved in talks.

Olympics chiefs are thought to favour a "federal" arrangement with several universities sharing the campus and specialising in sport and science. The Olympic Park Regeneration Steering Group, attended by government ministers, Mr Johnson and the leaders of the five Olympic boroughs will launch the study next month.

"There is space on the Olympic Park site and some of the housing that will be left after the Games could be used as student accommodation," said a source.

Under the plan, funding will come from the colleges' own capital reserves and public funding. The Mayor's office is also in early talks with universities in Beijing about taking a share in the Olympic campus.

Higher education is a key part of the legacy for the Olympic Park. Booming creative and media departments at the University of East London and London Metropolitan University may be housed in the giant Olympic media centre in Hackney Wick after the Games.

London Metropolitan put itself forward for a legacy role as part of the original media centre consortium including Igloo and Carillion. Last month it emerged Igloo had withdrawn from the consortium after failing to find its share of funding for the £300million-plus venue.

Olympics chiefs have considered numerous cost-cutting measures to absorb the cash crisis. Proposals to build an entirely temporary complex have been ruled out as this would not have made a sufficient saving.

Games chiefs are also under pressure to deliver on a pledge for the site to become a "digital hub" creating up to 10,000 high-quality jobs.

It is thought the Olympic Delivery Authority will revert largely to its original plan to build a permanent 1.3million square metre facility in Hackney Wick, to the east of the Olympic Park.

Building work is due to begin in the spring but negotiations to find tenants for the giant structure -the size of Canada Tower in Canary Wharf- are expected to continue for several years.

eader Views (5) Add your view
Here's a sample of the latest views published.

The right honourable Sir Boris Johnson Prime Minister of
Great Britain it has a ring to it
- Richard Hayes, london england

That's what we need. Another university producing over-qualified, dis-satisfied grads that thinks the world owes them a living because they studied not-a-proper-subject for three years to get a 2:2 in tap dance theory and 18th century Hispanic poetry.
…that may not be an actual course but it would be as good for society as most they’ll offer…

Just build some high density homes, that's what London really needs.
- Ben, London

If Cambridge can have a scince park why not Stratford? High tech industrial jobs would congregate nearby.
- W R Stevenson, London

Why a new university? There are already lots of them. Why not do something really imaginative and move three Oxford ones, say Balliol, Magdalen, and All Souls, to the site, as a non-resident University purely for locals and Third Age Londoners. It would do wonders for social mobility, although in which direction I am not entirely certain.
- Tom, Maidstone

Boris saves the Olympics again! Excellent work. He really is the only hope for sorting this project and this city out from the disaster that was Liarstone. I'll be voting for him again in 2012 and after being Mayor if he wants to become PM.
- Paul, London

A majestic and even bigger park: now that really is a 2012 legacy
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620971-details/A+majestic+and+even+bigger+park%3A+now+that+really+is+a+2012+legacy/article.do)Rowan Moore
16.01.09

As we hit the halfway point between winning the Olympic bid and the opening of the Games, the afterlife of 2012 becomes still more pressing. Everybody knows this, which is why the Mayor is appointing a legacy tsar - but we still don't know much about what this legacy will be.

In particular, we don't know what will happen in the long period of transition between the end of the Games and the creation of new neighbourhoods that are set to sprout around it. Up to 10,000 homes are planned, its residents drawn by the glades and waterfalls of the Olympic park.

Just as the Prince Regent and his architect John Nash achieved with Regent's Park 200 years ago, it is hoped that greenery and real estate will flourish together: the park raises the value of the development around it, which in turn helps support the park. It will also be a happy marriage of government investment in 2012 and free-market property speculation.

But what if it doesn't work out like this? What if the private sector, still hobbled by rash investments of the past, is slow in arriving at the altar? What if there are no latterday equivalents of Nash's composite columns and stuccoed colonnades but rather hoardings wrapping tracts of nothing, adorned with fraying posters advertising with anxious optimism regeneration that has not yet arrived?

Then stolen Tesco trolleys and hooded gangs will stalk the land. Graffiti will besmirch the well-detailed balustrades of the park's many bridges. The waterfalls will bear plastic bags and tin cans. Gazebos and pavilions and public sculptures and whatever other structures built to adorn the park will be pummelled and torched. The park will turn from an asset for future development to a liability.

There is a serious risk that the second scenario will prevail. In the current climate there is no chance that the private developers would dive into the sites in and around the park.

Things might be looking a little better in four years but past experience shows that it takes a long time for recovering optimism to translate into large-scale development in untried locations, which is what the park and its environs will be. If, as expected, the current recession is deeper than the last one, recovery will take that much longer.

The Olympic village has already shrunk from 4,000 homes to less than 3,000, and will require some kind of financial bail-out because the developers Lend Lease can see no commercial justification for building homes there now. The village is in one of the more favoured parts of the Olympic site, being close to Stratford's public transport and the new Stratford City project. If development doesn't stack up there, nor will it anywhere else.

This will leave, for five, 10, 15 or more years, empty sites in three main categories. One will be sites surrounding the park, designated for future development but not being used for the Olympics. Another will be the sites of temporary Olympic facilities removed after 2012. These sites are almost all owned by the London Development Agency, which is responsible for the Olympic legacy.

The last category is land around the Olympic village, which it is not necessary to develop by 2012 but is intended for new housing some time in the future. This is owned by Lend Lease.

If all or many of these developments do not proceed, enjoyment of the greenery and water will be tainted by the presence of fenced-off sites. A potential weakness of the park is, in any case, its lack of easy connections with existing residential areas. A trek to reach it past dispiriting emptiness and down alleys flanked by hoardings will make it that much worse.

At the same time lack of development will mean a lack of residents immediately next door. As the great American writer Jane Jacobs pointed out a half-century ago, parks work only if there are people who use them regularly, and who are motivated to spot and report trouble and complain about bad maintenance. If no one cares much about them, they slide into decline.

The Olympic park, the most tangible physical asset of the 2012 legacy, would then become a problem. It would discourage not entice further development. It would require further regeneration initiatives stretching into a potentially limitless future to rescue it.

It will need both bold and practical thinking, now, to avoid this fate. The London Development Agency is aware of the issue and is developing what it calls a Legacy Masterplan Framework, without having yet unveiled a conclusive answer. Hoardings, it says, will be put up only around places where construction is actually going on.

The LDA is considering an extension of the Cultural Olympiad into the years after 2012 as a way of keeping the place lively. If it can truly fund and sustain a great artistic festival there, it would be admirable but the idea sounds more like the sort of laboured contrivance that comes when culture is used to fill gaps in thinking (consider, for example, the contents of the Millennium Dome). Nor would a festival animate the park all year round.

So while the LDA members are still scratching their heads, here's a suggestion. Why not make the undeveloped sites into a temporary park that would greatly expand the permanent Olympic park in the centre? Why not grow trees there to be transplanted elsewhere in London when development finally appears? Why not offset the Olympics' carbon footprint with a bit of greenery? Why not return some of the spirit of wilderness that prevailed in the lower Lee Valley before the Olympics arrived there? Why not permit more allotments?

It will need money, of course, to make this temporary park happen, but considerably less than the £200 million that the Olympic park itself, with its changes of level and waterworks, is costing. And it would be cheaper than letting undeveloped dead zones lower the value of the whole area.

The main objection would be that, when the time finally came to develop the land, people would forget that this greening was only temporary. The allotments would have put down roots and their owners would lie down in front of bulldozers to protect them. Similar things have happened when developers have allowed temporary uses of sites elsewhere in London.

Amnesiac resistance to development would indeed be a risk that could be countered only by saying as loudly and clearly as possible at the outset that the greening would not be permanent. The LDA, however, says it will not let such considerations put it off. This is greatly to its credit.

It is also intelligent, as the greater risk is that a swathe of east London will be dormant for the best part of a generation and the great Olympic legacy project will be derailed.

Land of hope and glory
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23621111-details/Land+of+hope+and+glory/article.do)Rowan Moore
16.01.09

The Olympic park is at the heart of the London Olympics. Along with the Aquatic centre it will be the most tangible legacy once the *stadium has been shrunk and the temporary venues removed.

Plans for creating new neighbourhoods — the long-promised regeneration that 2012 is supposed to bring — will depend on the park's ability to make the area desirable.

It is also one piece of the physical infrastructure where London can do better than Beijing. With London's smaller budgets we can't match the extravagance of the Bird's Nest stadium, but in Beijing the huge spaces between the structures were bleak parade grounds. The park could actually be pleasant for the spectators.

At 250 acres the area is about the size of St James's Park and is billed as “the largest urban park created in Europe for 150 years”. The southern part, where the main Olympic facilities are concentrated, will continue to be a place of sporting and other activities after the Games. The northern part will be a quieter, more contemplative place.

The park's greatest asset is water, provided by the River Lea and by the channels feeding off it. The San Francisco-based landscape architect George Hargreaves is proposing to exploit these allowing canals and channels to spread into pools and reedbeds. Hargreaves has designed parks all over the world, including the landscaping for the Sydney Olympics and for Bill Clinton's Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Conscious of the need to create a place specific to London, he is planning native species of tree such as oak and hawthorn, and re-using industrial materials to evoke the industrial heritage of the area.

He is planning gardens inspired by English traditions of plant collecting, in a half-mile long strip that will be realised by the 28-year-old garden designer Sarah Price. Hargreaves is also promising sustainability and biodiversity: new habitats that will attract frogs, insects, birds and mammals that have long disappeared from this area, such as kingfishers and otters.

The waterways and changes of level require more than 30 bridges to allow people to move around. Most, designed by Allies and Morrison architects, carry the ground over in such a way that you will hardly notice when you're on them. One, a piece of overlapping tagliatelle by Heneghan Peng Architects, will be one of the icons of the Games.

The park's greatest challenge will be attracting large numbers of visitors after the Games are over. If it does not, it will become an expensive liability. If it does, it will be hailed as one of the greatest achievements of the London Olympics.

And, in my opinion, the Beijing Olympic stadium looks like a pile of crap in the day time.

No offence but I fel the same about London's olympic stadium - a lot of colours in order to cover up a poor design (low budget)
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2904/birdsnestcroppedkq2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Hardly a low budget.

I agree to a point. But the bird's nest is still standing, that's the point, there's no need for another 80,000 seat stadium in London, especially one with a running track in it! Therefore the two are completely different. This was always planned to be temporary and it looks pretty good bearing that in mind. My issue is that it's still costing £500m+ for a temporary venue, which seems staggering.

I still have no faith in the stadium, however seeing pictures of the site taking shape, I do love the geography of the site, which has a lot to offer than Beijing didn't.. its flowing, its got life.. its organic almost. The stadium isn't all that, but the aquatic centre, and other parts of the set up are amazing.

At the end of the day really, the magic will always happen inside of these venues, and the memories will be of what happens on the track, on the court, in the pool or on the circuit... Providing we can accommodate the people and the spirit, we'll just have to live with the stadium :S

A majestic and even bigger park: now that really is a 2012 legacy
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620971-details/A+majestic+and+even+bigger+park%3A+now+that+really+is+a+2012+legacy/article.do)Rowan Moore
16.01.09



This is a good idea. It might take quite a few years to build out the remaining area. Look at that other great regeneration project on the Greenwich Penninsula which after 8 year is still mostly boarded up derelict sites with the surrounding streets poorly maintained with weeds growing between the cracks. If it was all greened off & developed piece by piece it would be so much better.

I still have no faith in the stadium

Strange thing to say. You think it won't work?

Can't West Ham just have the stadium afterwards????????, or another team, people mention Spurs, but that woud mean relocating from North London which they are proud of being from.

(Not that I'm sure any team in london would be able to sell out a capacity like that)

For 500-1000m, it seems like a waste of money to take it down, I mean after all the Olyimpics was bid for to regenrate that part of London, so whats the point in taking down the main building?

Oh for God's sake, I wish people would stop asking the same questions in these threads.

Can't West Ham just have the stadium afterwards????????, or another team, people mention Spurs, but that woud mean relocating from North London which they are proud of being from.

(Not that I'm sure any team in london would be able to sell out a capacity like that)

For 500-1000m, it seems like a waste of money to take it down, I mean after all the Olyimpics was bid for to regenrate that part of London, so whats the point in taking down the main building?

Does nobody fuckin listen when these questions are answered. They are not taking down the whole stadium. They are reducing the capacity and retaining it as a dedicated athletics stadium; barely a waste in my opinion.

I wish West Ham would go bust already and then we won't have to hear this anymore.

Does nobody fuckin listen when these questions are answered. They are not taking down the whole stadium. They are reducing the capacity and retaining it as a dedicated athletics stadium; barely a waste in my opinion.

I for one would like to see what the stadium will look like after the olympics, I think the fact that no one has shown this makes me feel a bit uneasy about the project.

It will look like the Olympic stadium but without the temporary seating. Obviously.

I for one would like to see what the stadium will look like after the olympics, I think the fact that no one has shown this makes me feel a bit uneasy about the project.

Me too. It isn't 'obvious' how it will look without the temporary seating attached and with the stadium in legacy mode at all. I doubt it will just be a big circle of sunken seats without any building/s, there will need to be facilities there and these will need designing.

Is the Olympic park in Hyde Park?

I doubt it will just be a big circle of sunken seats without any building/s, there will need to be facilities there and these will need designing.

The facilities will be the pods which are pulled closer to the permanent seating. From the planning documents the roof of the stadium will be retrofitted to cover the remaining seats.

Is the Olympic park in Hyde Park?

No.It's in Stratford in East London. Roughly in the circled area.

http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv88/Albishton/1950948-Aerial_Shot_of_the_metropol.jpg

Me too. It isn't 'obvious' how it will look without the temporary seating attached and with the stadium in legacy mode at all. I doubt it will just be a big circle of sunken seats without any building/s, there will need to be facilities there and these will need designing.

All i would like to see, as we have with the aquatics venue, is what it will look like when adjusted to be the smaller 25,000 stadium.

Steel frame completes on Olympic 2012 power house
(http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=284&storycode=3133989&c=1)13 February, 2009
By Olivia Boyd

Olympic park building will provide power, heating and cooling for Games and legacy buildings

The steel frame of the 2012 energy centre, that will provide power for the Olympic site, has nearly completed.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/436xAny/k/m/u/olympic_energy_centre_2012_1.jpg

The building in the west of the Olympic Park, which is due to complete by the end of this year, includes biomass boilers and a combined cooling heat and power (CCHP) plant.

It is intended to supply power, heating and cooling for the Games and for legacy buildings after 2012.

More than 500 tonnes of steel and 3,500m² of concrete will be used in the centre's structure, which will be 45m at its highest point.

The building is expected to be operation from early next year, when it is due to start providing heated water to the Olympic stadium. It will then be connected to other venues as they complete.

ODA director of infrastructure and utilities Simon Wright said: “We are building for Games and legacy together from the very beginning and the strong progress we are making on the energy centre gives us a first glimpse of the essential new infrastructure that will serve the Olympic park for generations to come.

“We are also making good progress on the wider utilities networks we are building which will complete the 'wiring' of the Olympic Park and will leave a backbone of new facilities essential for a lasting legacy.”

Other utilities under construction include a new electrical substation, water, gas and telecoms networks and a sewer network.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/316xAny/k/t/y/olympic_energy_centre_2012_3.jpg

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/316xAny/k/q/r/olympic_energy_centre_2012_2.jpg

I still have no faith in the stadium, however seeing pictures of the site taking shape, I do love the geography of the site, which has a lot to offer than Beijing didn't.. its flowing, its got life.. its organic almost. The stadium isn't all that, but the aquatic centre, and other parts of the set up are amazing.

At the end of the day really, the magic will always happen inside of these venues, and the memories will be of what happens on the track, on the court, in the pool or on the circuit... Providing we can accommodate the people and the spirit, we'll just have to live with the stadium :S

I think that the political side of China got the better of the Olympics. People were coming out to protest and the media did its contribution. What people might not have felt was maybe the joy and happiness of the chinese residents which were there, this was their first olympics and so joy would have been what they were feeling. We all know that China has many flaws and that really affected the games atmosphere which it shouldn't have.

A nice summation of what's going on, on the ground, as well as giving a good idea of the scale of what we're talking about:


Hard hats and hard cash: Welcome to London's £7.5bn Olympic building-site

A trip to London’s Olympic Park is always instructive, not least because it gives you an idea of what a £7.5bn building site looks like. I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the site in Stratford last week and it is impossible to escape the sense of progress on the ground.

The next year will be the busiest of London’s seven-year preparations for those building the venues and infrastructure. More than 3,000 people currently work on the site, which is run like a city-within-a-city with its own hospital and dedicated police and immigration officers, and while questions remain as how much it will eventually cost – the government’s latest estimate is £7.5bn with a following wind – on-site there is genuine movement.

My last trip was in July last year when the main stadium was just a saucer-shaped depression in the ground and millions of tonnes of soil still required cleaning before construction could begin.
Seven months on and the stadium is recognisably that, a crown of steel supports ringed by the some of the first seating supports emerging from the dirt, with the A-frames that will support the roof beginning to be installed.

Elsewhere the Aquatic Centre is beginning to rise from the ground too, though you would be hard-pressed to discern what shape it will take from the forest of steel and concrete supports onto which two huge-roof trusses will be shortly be loaded.
This is the most challenging building on the park, a fearsomely complicated construction thanks to the combination of Zaha Hadid’s hugely ambitious (and equally expensive) design and its position in the most complex corner of the park. As well as waterways and railways passing over ground, electricity cables run underneath, and engineers have had to design a huge load-bearing frame to ensure they do not collapse when the trusses are installed. Oh, and the site flooded last week.

Other venues are also beginning to progress, with the velodrome footprint clearly prepared and the media centre site cleared for construction to begin later this year.
Five large tower cranes have been installed as work begins on the £1bn Olympic village, with a further 19 due to be in place in the next few months to build the 11 tower blocks, each 11 stories high, that will house competitors come 2012.

Equally fundamental to the site is the development of waterways, roads and bridges that will turn what this once-dysfunctional mess of post-industrial sites into a coherent city space the size of Hyde Park.

At the moment site traffic ploughs along muddy tracks and over temporary bridge structures, but when the Games have gone new roads will serve the park and its residents. The River Lea has been widened too, with the pilings that currently keep floodwater at bay due to be replaced by landscaping come 2012. Progress is fundamental as well as cosmetic; the Park has its own £100m power station and three electricity sub-stations ensuring that it will be self-sufficient during and after the Games.

As the Olympic facilities rise work is proceeding apace on the adjoining Stratford City shopping centre development, which will be bigger than Westfield and Bluewater when it opens.
At the moment the John Lewis and Marks & Spencer buildings at the heart of this commercial development tower over the Olympic venues, but the two projects are fundamentally linked. The top-end retailers that have bought into Stratford City have done so on the understanding that the 2,800 apartments in the Olympic village will be bought after the Games by professionals living on ready-meals prepared in expensively-furnished kitchens.

That vision is five years away, and for now the focus in the Park is on continuing the good progress made so far, while the politicians and Olympic executives try and square the budget. On last week's evidence my money is on the chaps in the hard-hats.

Link (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/paulkelso/blog/2009/02/16/hard_hats_and_hard_cash_welcome_to_londons_75bn_olympic_buildingsite)

http://images.businessweek.com/story/08/370/0206_ollins.jpg

Sorry for having an opinion. I'll agree with everything you say next time.
Liking a logo is a matter of opinion. My view of the logo is shared by a majority of the public.

Below sums it up....one stadium is an amazing structure that was original, inspiring and instantly recognisible the other is hosting the Olympics in 2012.

http://www.enerpac.com/files/imagecache/projects_max/projects/Beijing.jpg

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/o/u/v/Stadium_39_WEB.jpg

I can't believe this the best my country can do. Sorry for having higher aspirations than some of you. But hey...we're on budget....whoopy!

considering that this economy's going down the pooper, i say that our design isn't so bad. shame it'll be downsized after 2012..that place would be a great venue for things like local athletics, or hosting big rugby matches or perhaps even a champions league final!

re post 87: wonderful pics. i notice a change in the 2012 logo simply saying 'london 2012'..it still makes me wish they could change the lisa-giving-head logo back to what they used during the proposals :(

The logo hasn't changed.

Olympic park set to lose money until 2025
(http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=3134312&c=1)20 February 2009
By Joey Gardiner

LDA may need rescue deal on £650m loan as plummeting land values hit regeneration

The London Development Agency is in dialogue with the Treasury over re-financing £650m of debt it took on to buy the Olympic park site, after consultants found it was set to make a loss until 2025.

According to sources close to the situation, the LDA is facing a “significant cash-flow problem” over the site, on which it is to oversee the construction of 10,000 homes after the Games.

Repayment of the loan is due to last for 20 years from 2014, but work done for the LDA by consultant Grant Thornton has shown that the revenue that can be generated by the legacy development will not start to match the planned repayments until about 2025.

Money is also needed to pay for continuing maintenance and for adapting the venues after the Games.

However, sources say financial modelling shows that the development will eventually show a profit for the public sector.

The source said: “The model shows a very significant deficit for anything up to 10 years. Ultimately, it is on to make a surplus, but there is a very significant cash flow problem.”

The LDA was planning to pay back the cost of the site by selling off packages to developers after the Games, but the plan has been affected by the huge drop in residential land values.

A source close to the situation said: “We could delay the payback start or lengthen the payback time, but any renegotiation will cost money.”

The news comes as the search began this week for a chair and chief executive of the special purpose vehicle designed to push through the regeneration. Former English Partnerships chair Margaret Ford is being tipped to chair the body, while former Lend Lease Europe chair Nigel Hugill is seen as a possible candidate to be chief executive.

An LDA spokesperson said: "The report shows the Olympic park site to be a good investment and land sales achieving a positive payback in the medium to long term, generating a return for the taxpayer.

"This is the important conclusion of the report as it will come as no surprise to anyone in the building industry that current land values continue to fall and in response we will adjust our financial strategies accordingly. We had always recognised that it will take time before we can begin generating revenue streams to cover operational and running costs."

Plans for 2012 Olympic Park given planning approval

http://www.hortweek.com/channel/Landscape/article/884226/Plans-2012-Olympic-Park-given-planning-approval/


The largest new urban park to be created in the UK in the past 150 years moved a step closer today after the parklands plan was approved last night (24 February).

Contractors are currently being selected to start creating the 100ha park this spring.

The Olympic Park will include broad sweeping lawns and footpaths leading down to riverbanks, seating and public spaces throughout the park with live screens showing the sporting action.

Olympic Delivery Authority project sponsor for parklands and public realm John Hopkins said: "This gives the green light to a great new park that will be both a fantastic backdrop for the Games and the heart of the regeneration of east London. We have almost finished cleaning the Olympic Park site, much of it contaminated through decades of industrial use, and this spring we will start the process of transforming the area into a new green space for people and wildlife."

The ODA is procuring contractors to start creating the parklands this spring:

Bam Nuttall was appointed last year to manage the delivery of the northern section of parklands and procure packages for the whole of the park, including 2,000 mature and semi-mature trees and plants for the wetlands and river edges, with suppliers due to be appointed for both packages in the coming months.
In the next few months the contractor will begin procuring soft landscaping, hard landscaping and ground works contracts.

A contract to manage the delivery of the south of the park will be issued at the end of this year.
This spring a contractor will be appointed to deliver the regeneration of the Greenway, a 3km walking and cycling route which runs from Victoria Park to West Ham.

A team comprising LDA Design and Hargreaves Associates was selected to design the Olympic Park. The team also includes: Buro Four, LDA Design Ecology, the University of Sheffield, Field GB, TEP, Sarah Price Landscapes, Sutton Vane, Fulcrum Consulting and Centre for Accessible Environments

I took a long walk down the Greenway today. Does anyone know if there are any plans to do anthing to this at all? And for some of the old towers blocks, particularly around Stratford Station - are there any plans to simply give them a lick of paint? It would make such a difference.

The Greenway from Victoria Park to West Ham station will be refurbished to a new design in 2011.

Taken on March 13 from London 2012 website.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3589/3367810332_4763e91a32_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3622/3367810320_b32ec84b1a_b.jpg

^^It's going to be amazing

The setting is wonderful. I really hope it turns out a bit like the renders in legacy mode, because that will be a prime place to live. I'm going to have to become a nurse to live in the olympic village afterwards!

I still have no faith in the stadium, however seeing pictures of the site taking shape, I do love the geography of the site, which has a lot to offer than Beijing didn't.. its flowing, its got life.. its organic almost. The stadium isn't all that, but the aquatic centre, and other parts of the set up are amazing.

At the end of the day really, the magic will always happen inside of these venues, and the memories will be of what happens on the track, on the court, in the pool or on the circuit... Providing we can accommodate the people and the spirit, we'll just have to live with the stadium :S


The setting,backdrop ( we'll see Canary Wharf and the 02) and park/better public access may save this from being a complete disaster.

I have some concerns about lack of weather protection, we all know British weather
can be difficult, but between the venues there is little weather protection.

In the original muscle stadium plans, there was loads of umbrella style shelters.


Why the lack of protection? I did note in the Olympic village a lot of windows
have sun shading with canopies!

So far see little protection against our famous british summer in the park.

I thought the downpour during Manchester's 2002 closing ceremony gave it a certain charm

^ Umbrellas?? ;)

cagooles and pacamacs love em

^^

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/34/90706207_70b83bd68a_b.jpg

better weather protection in this, than the current plans? for the park

I shed a tear everytime i see that stadium design, i just love it so much, but i don't mind what we're getting at the moment.

And finally some large views of the olympic site taken again last tuesday. A lot of earth removed and displaced.

Southern tip of the olympic site
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3631/3391380159_0ee23a8afb_o.jpg

A wider view of the southern part
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3545/3392190078_ae08f0e81f_o.jpg

Thats a great shot of the southern tip, you see strata, will see the shard and the london eye. put in the finished park as the foreground and its gonna be a great shot for the cameras :)

First permanent bridge goes up on London 2012 site
(http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=284&storycode=3138060&c=0)8 April, 2009
By Olivia Boyd

Footbridge is first of five crossings to link arena to rest of Olympic park

The latest images of work on the Olympic stadium show the first permanent bridge on site being lifted into place.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/web/n/g/x/2012_Olympic_bridge_apr_09_3.jpg

The 41m footbridge is the first of five crossings that will link the arena, which is surrounded by water on three sides, to the rest of the 2012 park.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/web/n/q/a/2012_Olympic_bridge_apr_09_1.jpg

Steel beams weighing 88 tonnes have been installed across the River Lea and work on the bridge deck is due to complete by the summer.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/web/c/p/e/2012_Olympic_bridge_apr_09_5.jpg

Chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority, David Higgins, said progress on the bridge into place was an “important milestone” in the run up to the 2012 Games.

http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/web/g/g/u/2012_Olympic_bridge_apr_09_4.jpg

i just can't wait for the world's press to be viewing london, highlighting all her assets. i genuinely believe it will be considered a huge and outstanding success, and will be marveled for it's historic venues and people-friendly approach. 'cept from our own press of course ... :)

2012 Olympic park ready for climate change
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23675502-details/2012+Olympic+park+ready+for+climate+change/article.do)Ruth Bloomfield
14.04.09

OLYMPIC chiefs are attempting to "future-proof" the Olympic park by planting only trees, grasses and flowers that will be able to withstand hot, wet weather.

The Olympic Delivery Authority, which today released a series of images showing how the 250 acres of parkland will look, wants the legacy of the Games to be protected from climate change. Some British species such as beech trees are to be left out from the design because it is feared they will die out if the climate changes as predicted.

The plans also include a network of ditches and gullies to reduce the risk of flash flooding as rainfall increases in years to come.

An ODA spokesman said that organisers wanted to retain the park's distinctly British feel, but only resilient species including cherry and oak trees are to be planted. He added: "Robust native species have been recommended for the river corridors that can cope with variation in water levels and flash flooding, both of which are features of climate change." More than 2,000 trees and other tall plants will offer shade to residents. There will also be space for allotments so future residents can grow their own food.

More than 150 homes in Stratford Village, next to the 2012 site, have been transformed after residents were persuaded to plant window boxes and sew quilts.

Games theorist
(http://www.regen.net/inDepth/ByDiscipline/Physical-Regeneration/899051/Games-theorist/)Adam Branson, Regeneration & Renewal
20 April 2009

Interview with George Hargreaves, director, Hargreaves Associates.
The landscape architect behind Sydney's Olympic park is hard at work on plans for London 2012. But the masterplanner says that every site has to be approached with fresh eyes.

George Hargreaves has become something of an Olympic specialist. But rather than a flair for archery or the ability to jump remarkably high, he's expert in designing parks. He's got the credentials. Back in the late 1990s, when London's bid was still on Ken Livingstone's chalkboard, Hargreaves was charged with designing the park for the Sydney Games.

So, what lessons can Hargreaves apply from his experiences down under? Just one, it turns out. "One of the best things about working on the Olympic Games is that it has to be done by a certain date," he says. "A lot of the time, projects get left in limbo and it takes forever to get things done." However, the reason for a lack of transferable lessons, he says, is that landscape architects must approach every site and every client with fresh eyes. "Each site is unique. Each site has its issues and its opportunities," he says.

According to Hargreaves, the authorities in Sydney and London have proved to be very different taskmasters. "Sydney's main Olympic site was more of a plaza than a park. It was very much: 'Make it function for the Games and if we have to do some retrofit afterwards, then we'll do it. Just make sure that half a million people can move through here in four hours'," says Hargreaves. "In London, they were much more: 'We have all these things we're trying to do with legacy, and, oh, by the way, we want the Games to work.' The challenge was to work out how to build a park alongside a river on a toxic site, and then how to hold the Olympics there. Ultimately, the idea is to take a derelict, contaminated strip of land and transform it into a park of equivalent size and quality to central London's Hyde Park."

The masterplan that Hargreaves' firm has produced with fellow consultancy LDA Design envisages a permanent new park for the East End, inspired by Victorian and post-war pleasure- and festival-gardens. The plans include gardens charting the history of British botany, as well as new wildlife habits, including ponds, wetlands and meadows. The plans also envisage opening up almost two miles of the river Lea's banks to the public.

While his firm maintains offices in London, Hargreaves is still most well-known for the work he did in Sydney. Given that East End residents are so proud of the area's history and culture, I wonder how he tried to ensure that his designs matched local people's aspirations. "Mainly by what we're trying to do with the river," he says. "We weren't really trying to reflect the cultural history of the local area. Our main way of going local was to focus on the river."

In reality, Hargreaves' opportunities to consult East End residents were limited because he was only engaged by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) in March 2008 after the original architecture firm left the project. "We probably didn't do as much consultation as we would've liked because of the time that we had," he says. "We only had three to four months to redesign it. We were working off an old masterplan that had been done by others. So we saw the (old consultation) documents and then, as the plans developed, we took our own out to the public."

However, Hargreaves says that local people responded well to the plans when they were published last November. "They got that we were really trying to make it a riverside park," he says. "We explained how it is going to work for the Olympics, but we also said that that's not the main game. The main game is what happens after the Games."

One of the key things that still needs to be addressed, says Hargreaves, is not what happens to the park after the Olympic caravan has packed up and gone, but what happens to the surrounding land. "One of the things we're looking at is what's going to happen in 2014, 2015, 2016, when you've got a 35ha park, but you've also got 150ha of blank space around it," he says. But wasn't the expectation that the area around the park would be rapidly developed? Will the recession really mean there will be so much unused land several years after the Games?

The reality, says Hargreaves, is that there was always going to be plenty of vacant plots. "Even if we had the seemingly glorious economy of three years ago, it would still be too much to develop at one time," he says. "You couldn't do all that at once." So, what's the solution? "We're working on developing park corridors that reach out to communities beyond that blank space. We're talking about how to take those development sites and turn them into event spaces. Instead of fallow land, it's a way to make it active."
Hargreaves is currently employed by the ODA, but in 2014 responsibility for the park passes to the London Development Agency (LDA). Will Hargreaves still be around to advise on the project at that point? He replies that, while you can never guarantee anything, he expects to be involved with the park until 2014. However, he doubts he'll be asked to stick around to provide a sense of continuity when responsibility for the park changes hands. "My client is the ODA, and the LDA is probably going to want to bring in its own people. That's just the nature of the beast," he says. "But we are working with the LDA now, bringing up these issues and saying: 'The sites around the park aren't going to get developed straight away, so what are you going to do?'"

CV HIGHLIGHTS
1977: Graduates from the University of Georgia with a bachelor degree in landscape architecture.
1983: Starts his own landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates.
1986: Begins teaching at Harvard University's School of Design.
2000: Completes Sydney's Olympic park.
2007: Publishes Large Parks, co-written with Julia Czerniak.

Olympic Park waterways' past is dredged for a better future
8 May 2009

A multi-million pound dredging programme to revitalise the Olympic Park waterways is underway, improving water quality and opening up the navigation to allow freight boats to carry construction materials into the site.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3597/3513262154_6c9fbba680.jpg

A 60-tonne craft has started dredging a 2.2km stretch of water from Bow Locks on Bow Creek to the Waterworks River, adjacent to the site of the Aquatics Centre. The craft is expected to remove 30,000 tonnes of silt, gravel and rubble as well as tyres, shopping trolleys, timber and at least one motor car.

ODA Environment Manager Richard Jackson said: 'The Olympic Park is characterised by a series of waterways which act as green corridors running through the heart of the site. Currently, they are polluted, neglected and under-used, and have been treated as a dumping ground for everything from shopping trolleys to cars.

'This dredging programme is an important step in regenerating the waterways and will help improve water quality, creating better habitats for wildlife and plants.

The clearing and cleaning of the waterways will enable freight barges to carry construction materials in, and waste out, of the Park during the construction phase. A wharf is being constructed on the Waterworks River near the Aquatics Centre and will be used to receive freight loads for the Olympic Park contractors. Work began on the upper levels of the wharf this week and is due to be completed at the start of June.

Barges will then be able to travel into the Park by water via the new lock and water control structure, Three Mills Lock, at Prescott Channel. The £20m structure comprises twin water control gates, a 62m-long tidal lock, footbridge, lock control building, fish pass and fixed weir.

Richard Jackson added: 'This is a crucial part of our logistics strategy as we plan to use the waterways for the transport of construction materials into the Olympic Park, cutting down on the amount of lorries travelling on the roads.'

Richard Rutter, Regeneration Manager, British Waterways said: 'Dredging the waterways of the silt and rubbish built up over the years in and around the Olympic Park is an essential part of the rejuvenation of east London’s rivers. The dredged aggregates will be recycled and reused in construction works in the Olympic Park.

'These dredging works will help us to realise our dream of seeing both commercial freight barges and leisure boats taking to the water once again in east London.'

Notes to editors:

Pictures and footage of dredging and sustainable transport deliveries can be obtained from the link below:

http://mm.gettyimages.com/mm/nicePath/locog?nav=pr124151537

The dredging programme will help open up the Bow Back Rivers and tributaries of the River Lee Navigation that run through the Park, enabling 350-tonne barges to carry materials in and out of the construction zone.

There are 8.35km of waterways in and around the Park. The Lea Valley waterways primarily run north to south through the heart of the Park and ultimately connect with the Thames.

The River Lea runs through the centre of the Park and is joined in the northern part of the Park by the Channelsea River, Henniker’s Ditch and two main areas of wetlands. In the south, the waterways include the Waterworks River, City Mill River, Bow Back River and the Old River Lea. The Park’s western-most boundary is the Lea Navigation – a historically important canal that links east London to west London.

The Three Mills Lock and Water Control Structure at Prescott Channel is funded by British Waterways, Defra, the Department for Transport, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Transport for London. It will re-establish full navigation on the Bow Back Rivers for the first time in decades.

British Waterways cares for and manages 100 miles of canals and rivers and 110 acres of docks in London. As a not-for-dividend public corporation it works with a broad range of public, private and voluntary sector partners to unlock the potential of the inland waterways for the benefit of the millions who visit and care for them.

http://www.london2012.com/photos/resized/2009/6/10/520x500/olympic-park-trees.jpg

Around 2,000 semi-mature British-grown trees have been hand-picked for the London 2012 Olympic Park. They are predominantly native species such as ash, alder, willow, birch, hazel, cherry, poplar, London plane and lime.

2000 Olympic Park trees hand-picked for London’s largest ever planting

Olympics Desk www.thelondondailynews.com

Around 2000 semi-mature British grown trees have been hand-picked for the London 2012 Olympic Park in what is thought will be the largest one-off planting of its kind in the capital.

The trees will form the roots of the 100 hectare park that will provide a colourful setting and festival atmosphere for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and a green space for people and wildlife in legacy. The four to seven metre high trees have been grown by the selected supplier, Hilliers Nurseries in Hampshire, which has worked on projects including the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Manchester Commonwealth Games Stadium and the Millennium Dome.

The trees, which will be planted over the following three winters, have been carefully selected to ‘future proof’ against climate change and are predominantly native species such as ash, alder, willow, birch, hazel, cherry, poplar, London plane and lime. Trees will provide shelter from wind and sunshine across the park, Willow and Alder will be planted in river areas to withstand flooding and species vulnerable to climate change have been avoided.

Viewing first-hand the rows of Olympic Park trees in Hampshire, ODA Chairman John Armitt said: “Seeing 2000 semi-mature trees lined up ready to start being planted in the Olympic Park gives you a real sense of the green setting being created for the Games themselves and the transformation of this part of London in legacy. We are cleaning up former industrial land to create the largest urban park in the UK for over a century as a cornerstone for the regeneration of the area.

“We are not only planting trees that will look fantastic and reflect the traditions of great British parks, but also create habitats for wildlife and help ‘future proof’ against the impacts of climate change on the park and surrounding communities.”

London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Chairman Sebastian Coe said: “Progress building the Olympic Park has been spectacular and as the facilities begin to take shape, the excitement is growing. At Games time, the eyes of the world will be on this area of London and after the Games, there will be an entirely new community left behind. In 2012 it will be a hub of sporting excellence and a thriving, lively focal point for spectators and visitors. Beyond that, the area will be home to housing, places of work, sporting and education facilities. The trees will ensure that the Park will be just that – a park, making sure that people who visit in 2012 and the communities who live there beyond do so in a spectacular, family-friendly environment.”

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: "The trees that are being planted over the next three years are largely native species which will ensure the park is a haven for wildlife whilst giving a sense of the traditional British Woodlands that make up such a large part of our parks and countryside."

Royal Horticultural Society Superintendent for Woody Ornamentals Colin Crosbie said: “Trees have an unparalleled ability to remove C02 from the atmosphere, bring beauty to the landscape, provide shade and help to calm down our cities – they are the one single, biggest natural entity on which we rely and unfortunately, pay little attention too. This planting will equate to a city wood that will not only care for us in the long term us, but will also provide a home to London’s wildlife. Its fantastic news and an example I hope other event organizers will follow.”

ODA Project Sponsor for Parklands and Public Realm John Hopkins said: “The UK horticultural industry is demonstrating its enthusiasm to help deliver the London 2012 Games. Selecting these trees takes us a step closer to creating a new park for London at the heart of the 2012 Games and its legacy. The planning application has been approved, contractors and suppliers are being appointed and the land is nearly ready for construction of the parklands to start on track this summer. These big trees will have a significant impact in Games and for a hundred years or more in Legacy. I look forward to working with the supplier to ensure that they are nurtured, delivered, planted and thrive in the Olympic Park.”

Following a highly competitive procurement through www.competefor.com, the online dating agency matching businesses to London 2012 supply chain work, Hillier Nurseries has been selected to provide the majority of the trees from their Hampshire nursery and source any additional requirements. The 145 year old family-owned company has won 64 consecutive Gold Medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. All trees will comply with the UK and EU regulations for plant health and quality in accordance with the National Plant Specification.

Over the next three years suppliers will be sought for thousands of younger woodland trees, shrubs and other plants to create a diverse and rich parkland for the 21st century developing the tradition of centuries of British landscape and garden design.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) will shortly appoint a contractor to supply over 500,000 wetland plants for the parklands, ready for planting to start next spring.

In legacy the parklands, designed for people and wildlife, will provide the focus for the London 2012 legacy sports facilities including the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, VeloPark, multi-sports arena and Eton Manor outdoor sports complex. The southern part of the Park will focus on continuing the festival atmosphere of the Games, with riverside gardens, markets, events, cafes and bars. The northern parklands will provide a more open, ecological landscape of wetlands, woodlands and bio-diverse lawns and habitats for hundreds of existing and rare species from kingfishers to otters.

The ODA is working with the London Development Agency (LDA) and the newly formed Olympic Legacy Company to ensure the parklands fit into the Legacy Master Plan Framework - a spatial plan for the development of the Olympic Park site after the 2012 Games which will address the long-term management and maintenance of the parklands.

From my trip to Holden Point.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3331/3636383639_e3f3385afa_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3352/3636393423_469b04f3ef_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/3637213996_237fc14a39_b.jpg

From my trip to Holden Point.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3331/3636383639_e3f3385afa_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3352/3636393423_469b04f3ef_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/3637213996_237fc14a39_b.jpg

Why can't I see your pics?

what are the low-rise buildings to the left that are being constructed going to be?

The Westfield shopping centre.

And one from the webcam this summer evening.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3356/3654726050_14fbc342ba_o.jpg

I forgot to post this when I did my pics the other week.

lA2jWQrN13k

http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/07/16/05/41/4462904_616x257.JPG

£2.1bn with 3-4 years to go.

Where did you get that table? Hoping to see what total projected cost is.

ODA annual report.

Borough wants to make Olympic site a royal park
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23723680-details/Borough+wants+to+make+Olympic+site+a+royal+park/article.do)Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent
24.07.09

A Royal park could be created on the site of the London Olympics to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

The proposed Queen Elizabeth Park would be the first with royal status in east London. It is being proposed by the borough of Newham.

The council will present its plans for 100 hectares of parkland in the Lower Lea Valley to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which funds and is responsible for the capital's eight royal parks.

Newham says its idea would bring extra prestige to the Olympic Park and help attract tourists and investors to the area after the Games. The royal family's East End connections, from the Queen Mother's visits during the Blitz to the role of Royal Docks, will be highlighted as part of the proposal.

Royal status would come with an expert team of gardeners contracted to the Royal Parks Agency, which manages the spaces with an annual government grant of about £10 million.

Newham faces a battle with ministers to win approval for the scheme, as creating a park would require legislation.

The London Mayor will be responsible for the parkland after the Games, but the cost of maintaining the site would shift to the Government if the request were granted. Newham has calculated that the park would cost up to £3 million a year to manage.

The mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, said: “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The spotlight of the world is on us. Let's think ambitiously. A new royal park would be a fitting legacy of the Games.”

London's eight royal parks — Bushy Park, Green Park, Greenwich Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent's Park, Richmond Park and St James's Park — were created by the 1851 Crown Lands Act which transferred the spaces then owned by Queen Victoria to public ownership. A DCMS spokesman said: “The royal parks were created in the 19th century by new legislation. There are no plans to amend that or introduce new legislation.”

Mr Johnson appointed Baroness Ford to determine the Olympic Park's legacy. As chairwoman of the Olympic Park legacy company, her responsibilities include securing the future use of parkland and the sports venues, such as the aquatics centre.

Uncertainty surrounds the future use of up to two thirds of green spaces in the Olympic Park, although it has been designated for unspecified commercial and residential development.

One from Simon LP on flickr.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2497/3763231882_2d24de1f3d_b.jpg

Is that Victoria Park where the end of the wing tip is?

Is that Victoria Park where the end of the wing tip is?
Nah, Victoria Park is under the wing in this pic.

No Hackney Marsh. Victoria Park is hidden by the wing.

the stadium looks like a giant gas ring.

the stadium looks like a giant gas ring.

Ironic being the history of the area and that it is made out of recycled gas cylinders.

The ODA want you to scroll......

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2566/3789269049_0f110e3dc8_b.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2566/3789269049_d48da13cb5_o.jpg

Great photo, cheers Darjole. The progress is awesome but there's so much left to do, if they plant as many trees and greenery as they say they're going to then it's going to be the most amazing park.

Great photo, cheers Darjole. The progress is awesome but there's so much left to do, if they plant as many trees and greenery as they say they're going to then it's going to be the most amazing park.

Thats usually the quickest part. In a few months they could green the entire park.

Thats the first site update where I have been able to understand the relationship of all the major venues to the Westfield Centre, Stratford Stations and Olympic Village.

Those towerblocks - are they staying?

Anybody fancy doing a render?? HA :lol:

You can see how it relates to London, great shot as well. The Olympic park will be a new landmark for London. An area of green and sports facilities should be great. Now we just need Heron Tower finishing!:cheers:

Those towerblocks - are they staying?

Which ones? Most of them have been refurbished in the last few years.

Does anyone know of the Greenway is still open, and if it is when it's due to close?

I'd like to go down and take a look from the areas that are still open to the public

It's only closed between Stratford High Street and Pudding Mill Lane. There is diversion down Pudding Mill Lane and under the railway line.

They've already started refurbishing most of it, cutting off one side but still allowing access on the other. It closes now at night though (which as anyone knows locally, is a good thing).

New logistics centre opens at Olympic park
13 August, 2009

By Sophie Griffiths

Centre co-ordinates arrival of four delivery vehicles a minute at the 2012 construction site

A new logistics centre at the Olympic park is now fully operational, as the site prepares for its busiest phase in the project.

The Olympic Delivery Authority's (ODA) road logistics centres, on the M11 and in Barking, will manage deliveries to the Olympic park.

The M11 logistics centre takes vehicles from the North and West of the UK and has processed 5,000 vehicles to date. The Barking logistics centre takes vehicles from the South and East of the country and has so far processed nearly 15,000 vehicles.

Deliveries to the Olympic park go to the logistics centre to be screened. The vehicles are then recorded onto the vehicle tracking module (VTM) before being called forward to leave the logistics centre to meet their allotted time for arrival at the site.

The data is used to manage demand accordingly and ensure the arrival of vehicles into the Olympic park is staggered.

ODA chairman John Armitt said: “The 'big build' is well under way with construction work now started on all of the permanent venues on the site. With around four vehicles a minute entering the Olympic park, getting the logistics right to support all this activity is imperative and the logistics centres help manage the flow of vehicles in and around Stratford.”

In addition to the road logistics centres, the ODA has provided contractors with facilities for bringing materials in and out of site by rail and water.



Read more: http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=284&storycode=3146783&c=1#ixzz0O3Iy3TRs

Anyone could put the whole masterplan of Olympic park? I saw it some times ago, but I don't know where.

Thx.

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2855/olympicparkmaptf8.gif

Kinda surprised this wasn't already mentioned in here:

http://www.london2012.com/news/archive/2009-10/vote-for-your-favourite-olympic-park-garden-design.php

Twelve budding gardeners from across the UK have been shortlisted for the public vote for the Olympic Park Great British Garden competition.
You can now vote on your favourite designs from both age ranges – 16 and under and over-17. Entrants had to design a 1,000sq m garden in the London 2012 Olympic Park incorporating the unique qualities of a British domestic garden.

Voting is open for the next month and can be done via the Royal Horticultural Society’s website.

The winners from each category will then work with the world-class team creating the London 2012 parklands to design a Great British Garden that will be in bloom during the Games and remain long after 2012.

Seen their ages!!?

Short-listed entries in the 16 years and under category are:

* Ben Rubin-Moberg, aged 7 from Reigate. Ben’s design mixes traditional British plants and trees like elderflowers and roses with invented activities such as the ‘Canoe trail’, a special canoe on a rail that children can peddle around the garden’s pond.
* Hannah Clegg, aged 10 from Malmesbury. Hannah’s design includes Olympic treasures such as tree of golden acorns as well as orchards and vegetable patches.
* Tanya Ward, aged 14 from Rugby. Tanya has designed a ‘secret garden’ with hidden benches, wild-flowers and a pond designed to attract wildlife.
* James Callicott, aged 15 from Prestwood. James’ garden is design is based upon the Tudor rose but includes flowers from across the globe such as lavender from Portugal and Edelweiss from Austria to symbolise nations joining together to take part in the Olympics.
* Skandan Sithamparanathan, aged 13 from Rochester. Skandan’s design is a ‘united wheel’ surrounded by a small river and paths that reflect the Olympic rings.
* Harriet Smith aged 7 from Hadleigh. Harriet’s garden is full of blooming flowers, wildlife and rabbits with a tent at the centre for people to hide in and watch the animals.

Shortlisted entrants in the 17 years and over category are:

* Emma Graham from Ipswich whose great-grandfather won a gold and silver medal for Great Britain in the 1908 London Games. Emma’s garden uses the Olympic rings as the inspiration for her design, with areas of flowers, herbs and plants traditionally found in the UK.
* Rachel Read from Colchester. Rachel’s ‘perpetual garden’ design features a spiral time line that includes traditional flowers and has a series of plaques naming each British Olympic gold medallist since 1908.
* Susan Summers from Winchester. Susan’s garden is split into four areas to represent different experiences of the Olympics; the on-looker, participating, training and success.
* Joanne Slade from Chelmsford. Joanne’s concept is based around the ‘Ekecheiria truce’ that saw ancient Greeks suspend wars and rivalries to take part in the Olympics. It is designed to be a place of peace and tranquillity for visitors.
* Sian Astintgton from Crewe. Sian’s garden references the London 2012 logo and is designed to be in bloom all year round. It includes traditional British flowers and sights such as scare-crows and greenhouses.
* Angela Jones from Carshalton Beeches. Angela’s garden uses objects and items found in thousands of gardens across the UK to recreate a domestic garden including a pond, children’s play-area, lawn, shed and even a couple of Olympics-inspired garden gnomes!


The inspiration for the modern Olympic Games can be traced back to British doctor, William Penny Brookes who held the first Much Wenlock ‘Olympian Games’ in 1850. It was after a visit to Much Wenlock in 1890 that Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, was convinced to organise the 1896 inaugural Olympic Games in Athens. All entrants were asked to consider opportunities to incorporate a ‘de Coubertin’ Oak tree, currently being grown in Kew from seedlings taken from an oak tree de Coubertin planted himself in Much Wenlock, into their garden design.

# The garden will be part of over 100 hectares of open space that will be created in the Olympic Park - the largest urban park created in Europe for 150 years, which will include 45 hectares of wildlife habitat. It will use the latest green techniques to manage flood and rain water while providing quieter public space and habitats for hundreds of existing and rare species from kingfishers to otters.

# For further information please call Sally Aldous, Olympics Desk, DCMS Press Office on 020 7211 6145, Georgina Webb, Royal Horticultural Society Press Office on 020 7821 3044 or Ben Hurley, Olympic Delivery Authority Press Office on 0203 2012 620.

End quote.

Incidentally, I've heard that "largest public park in Europe for 150 years " claim may not be entirely accurate...

Great idea though, they've already dredged the Bow Back Waters and widened the rivers, reeds will be planted to filter the water, the trees that absolutely had to be cut down were turned into a log pile around the OP, fantastic for wildlife who find a cosy home in rotting wood, invertebrates and beetles.

Nord's Olympic substation is first to the finishing line
(http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3150446&channel=783&c=2&encCode=0000000001a3d351)09 October 2009
By Ellis Woodman

Former Yaya winner Nord’s electricity substation at the London Olympics site forges a language to which its neighbours can respond.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/p/g/r/Nord_Olympic_substat_141E9F.jpg

The country’s current dearth of building activity throws the furious pace of delivery at London’s Olympic park into sharp contrast. A total of 4,500 people are now labouring on this most epic of construction projects — the site approximates the area of Hyde Park — and this already heady figure is set to double by the beginning of next year.

The basic structures of the main stadium, the Aquatics Centre and much of the Athletes Village are in place while, particularly startlingly, even the frame of the vast media centre is essentially complete a mere three months after this broadly reviled scheme somehow secured planning permission.

First to the finishing line, however, is a project that is one of the smallest and ostensibly presented one of the least architecturally enticing briefs: an electricity substation built to serve the Olympic park and the adjoining Stratford city development.

Small, of course, is a relative term and one that, in pretty much any other context, one would think twice about before applying to a building 70m in length. Likewise, any expectation that this building might represent one of the more utilitarian contributions to the Olympic project proves entirely misplaced. If all the buildings on the site prove as good as this one, we really will have nothing to worry about.

Utilitarian it may not be, but a utility building it undoubtedly is. Indeed, it represents the first of a family of such structures, one of the largest of which is the Olympic energy centre being constructed to designs by McAslan & Partners on a neighbouring site. The Olympic Delivery Authority was keen that these buildings might employ a common vocabulary and was particularly concerned that the substation, as the first to be commissioned, should establish a language to which the others might respond.

While the substation’s client was, actually, not the authority itself but the gas and electricity supplier EDF Energy, the ODA played a significant role in steering the project towards its desired outcome. Certainly, EDF has not previously seen the need to conduct architectural competitions for its buildings. At Stratford, it was not only persuaded to do so but also to select an architect from a shortlist of emerging practices. By all accounts, the company is enormously proud of the completed building. If it adopts this experience as a model for future commissions, that really will be an Olympic legacy.

The competition was won by recent Young Architect of the Year Award winner Nord. Its scheme has gone through a number of iterations but from the start it has been conceived as having a building-like, even markedly monumental presence — a quality that stands in contrast to the vision proposed in the original FOA/ Edaw/Allies & Morrison Olympic park masterplan. In that scheme, the substation was seen as a quasi-landform which would present an essentially continuous relationship with the encompassing park. By the time of the competition, it was clear that such a fluid relationship would be unsupportable on security grounds. Of necessity, this was going to be a building of massive construction, isolated within a fence-enclosed precinct.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/u/v/v/Nord_Olympics_sub_69_web.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee

Nord’s scheme derives from a recognition that, while set apart, the building still had the capacity to establish a vivid spatial relationship to its context. The site lies midway up the park, close to its western boundary and is hemmed in by two major pieces of infrastructure — a railway line that cuts east-west across the park and the elevated “land bridge” that extends over the railway and constitutes the site’s principal north-south pedestrian route. It is with these features that the substation is primarily affiliated. Its linear plan follows a parallel orientation to the course of the railway while its highly animated section corresponds to the height of the land bridge.

The brief combined enormous technical demands with spatial requirements that could hardly be simpler. Three transformers needed to be accommodated, each of which converts a 132,000 volt input into an 11,000 volt output. One output supply extends to the north of the site, another to the south, while the third reaches out towards Stratford City and the Athletes’ Village in the east.

“Its dark surface recalls the language of 19th century tunnel construction”
Each 110 tonne transformer is serviced by a substantial volume of cooling equipment, while all are served by a common switch room. Nord has sited this last element in the middle of the plan, bookending it with the transformers to either side. Those with outputs to north and south have been clustered at the building’s west end while the one that feeds out towards the east naturally takes its place at the other.

The building owes its distinctive form to the decision to mount the cooling equipment directly above each transformer. Two stumpy towers rise up at either end, one significantly larger than the other. The building’s east end happens to project a couple of metres into the line of a viewing corridor that the masterplan has established from the park’s north-east corner to the main stadium in the south-west. The east tower has been adjusted to suit, its L-shaped appearance in elevation further contributing to the asymmetry of the composition.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/e/v/f/Nord_Olympic_substat_141EA3.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee
The roof of the switch room presents a datum that aligns with the height of the land bridge.

I have described the two extrusions as towers, but perhaps misleadingly so as the overall form appears very much the product of a subtractive rather than an additive process of composition. The sense of the building as a solid mass that has been hewn away is consolidated by its uniform cladding in brick. Nord had proposed constructing it from some of the 150 tonnes of brick reclaimed from the site’s demolished buildings. In the end, its engineer could not be satisfied that this material would meet the loading requirements and so a switch was made to a black engineering brick, Ibstock’s Himley Ebony.

Its hard, dark, saturnine surface recalls the language of 19th century bridge and tunnel construction, examples of which are still a common feature of this post-industrial landscape. It also proves highly light reflective, with the effect that the building’s chiselled geometry is transformed into a series of starkly contrasting planes of light and shadow. This effect is made richer still by the brick’s slyly differentiated detailing. What at first appears to be an unmodulated surface proves, on closer inspection, to be divided into three strata of escalating intricacy. The lowest, which rises to the height of the switchroom roof, is constructed in straightforward English bond.

So, too, is the one above but with the added refinement that the headers are teased forward by 25mm. Finally, on the uppermost layer the headers have been alternately recessed and omitted entirely, transforming the wall into an open cage. The perforate nature of this upper layer answers the ventilation needs of the cooling equipment but also has a pronounced effect on our reading of the architecture. By day, the band appears visually unstable, endlessly changing as the sun plays on its textured surface; by night internal illumination transforms it into a filigree crown of white light. In both states, what we initially took to be a solid, refractory mass is revealed as a body undergoing a process of evaporation.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/q/o/k/Nord_substation_69web.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee

With the frame of the McAslan building now in place, it is clear that it will read as one part of a pair with the substation. It is to be clad in corten steel rather than brick but it has adopted the datum line set by Nord’s building as the height of its plinth.

While much the taller of the two, it has also emulated its neighbour’s morphology. Visitors approaching along the land bridge will encounter a crescendo of similarly blocky forms, rising from the substation’s stumpy towers towards the high chimney that rises from the far end of the energy centre.

What is to be built here after 2012 remains undecided but it is likely the substation will find itself encompassed by residential development. If that proves to be the case, Nord’s building will make for a strange but, I am sure, captivating neighbour.

In a site where so much has been swept away and where the buildings that will ultimately occupy it are being constructed in such a short space of time, the substation strikes a powerfully archaic note. Indeed it presents itself as a kind of Ur-project, offering a rudimentary formal vocabulary that subsequent contributors to the park can seize and elaborate.

While the long journey towards making this vast site into a convincing piece of city has only just begun, this beguiling building represents a small but significant step in the right direction.

DarJoLe iv'e been following this forum for well over a year now, and you really do give some of the best information/ pictures/ ideas...

Loved this article, it could be in the onion!

It's a brick substation. Next!

Nord's Olympic substation is first to the finishing line
(http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3150446&channel=783&c=2&encCode=0000000001a3d351)09 October 2009
By Ellis Woodman

Former Yaya winner Nord’s electricity substation at the London Olympics site forges a language to which its neighbours can respond.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/p/g/r/Nord_Olympic_substat_141E9F.jpg

The country’s current dearth of building activity throws the furious pace of delivery at London’s Olympic park into sharp contrast. A total of 4,500 people are now labouring on this most epic of construction projects — the site approximates the area of Hyde Park — and this already heady figure is set to double by the beginning of next year.

The basic structures of the main stadium, the Aquatics Centre and much of the Athletes Village are in place while, particularly startlingly, even the frame of the vast media centre is essentially complete a mere three months after this broadly reviled scheme somehow secured planning permission.

First to the finishing line, however, is a project that is one of the smallest and ostensibly presented one of the least architecturally enticing briefs: an electricity substation built to serve the Olympic park and the adjoining Stratford city development.

Small, of course, is a relative term and one that, in pretty much any other context, one would think twice about before applying to a building 70m in length. Likewise, any expectation that this building might represent one of the more utilitarian contributions to the Olympic project proves entirely misplaced. If all the buildings on the site prove as good as this one, we really will have nothing to worry about.

Utilitarian it may not be, but a utility building it undoubtedly is. Indeed, it represents the first of a family of such structures, one of the largest of which is the Olympic energy centre being constructed to designs by McAslan & Partners on a neighbouring site. The Olympic Delivery Authority was keen that these buildings might employ a common vocabulary and was particularly concerned that the substation, as the first to be commissioned, should establish a language to which the others might respond.

While the substation’s client was, actually, not the authority itself but the gas and electricity supplier EDF Energy, the ODA played a significant role in steering the project towards its desired outcome. Certainly, EDF has not previously seen the need to conduct architectural competitions for its buildings. At Stratford, it was not only persuaded to do so but also to select an architect from a shortlist of emerging practices. By all accounts, the company is enormously proud of the completed building. If it adopts this experience as a model for future commissions, that really will be an Olympic legacy.

The competition was won by recent Young Architect of the Year Award winner Nord. Its scheme has gone through a number of iterations but from the start it has been conceived as having a building-like, even markedly monumental presence — a quality that stands in contrast to the vision proposed in the original FOA/ Edaw/Allies & Morrison Olympic park masterplan. In that scheme, the substation was seen as a quasi-landform which would present an essentially continuous relationship with the encompassing park. By the time of the competition, it was clear that such a fluid relationship would be unsupportable on security grounds. Of necessity, this was going to be a building of massive construction, isolated within a fence-enclosed precinct.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/u/v/v/Nord_Olympics_sub_69_web.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee

Nord’s scheme derives from a recognition that, while set apart, the building still had the capacity to establish a vivid spatial relationship to its context. The site lies midway up the park, close to its western boundary and is hemmed in by two major pieces of infrastructure — a railway line that cuts east-west across the park and the elevated “land bridge” that extends over the railway and constitutes the site’s principal north-south pedestrian route. It is with these features that the substation is primarily affiliated. Its linear plan follows a parallel orientation to the course of the railway while its highly animated section corresponds to the height of the land bridge.

The brief combined enormous technical demands with spatial requirements that could hardly be simpler. Three transformers needed to be accommodated, each of which converts a 132,000 volt input into an 11,000 volt output. One output supply extends to the north of the site, another to the south, while the third reaches out towards Stratford City and the Athletes’ Village in the east.

“Its dark surface recalls the language of 19th century tunnel construction”
Each 110 tonne transformer is serviced by a substantial volume of cooling equipment, while all are served by a common switch room. Nord has sited this last element in the middle of the plan, bookending it with the transformers to either side. Those with outputs to north and south have been clustered at the building’s west end while the one that feeds out towards the east naturally takes its place at the other.

The building owes its distinctive form to the decision to mount the cooling equipment directly above each transformer. Two stumpy towers rise up at either end, one significantly larger than the other. The building’s east end happens to project a couple of metres into the line of a viewing corridor that the masterplan has established from the park’s north-east corner to the main stadium in the south-west. The east tower has been adjusted to suit, its L-shaped appearance in elevation further contributing to the asymmetry of the composition.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/e/v/f/Nord_Olympic_substat_141EA3.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee
The roof of the switch room presents a datum that aligns with the height of the land bridge.

I have described the two extrusions as towers, but perhaps misleadingly so as the overall form appears very much the product of a subtractive rather than an additive process of composition. The sense of the building as a solid mass that has been hewn away is consolidated by its uniform cladding in brick. Nord had proposed constructing it from some of the 150 tonnes of brick reclaimed from the site’s demolished buildings. In the end, its engineer could not be satisfied that this material would meet the loading requirements and so a switch was made to a black engineering brick, Ibstock’s Himley Ebony.

Its hard, dark, saturnine surface recalls the language of 19th century bridge and tunnel construction, examples of which are still a common feature of this post-industrial landscape. It also proves highly light reflective, with the effect that the building’s chiselled geometry is transformed into a series of starkly contrasting planes of light and shadow. This effect is made richer still by the brick’s slyly differentiated detailing. What at first appears to be an unmodulated surface proves, on closer inspection, to be divided into three strata of escalating intricacy. The lowest, which rises to the height of the switchroom roof, is constructed in straightforward English bond.

So, too, is the one above but with the added refinement that the headers are teased forward by 25mm. Finally, on the uppermost layer the headers have been alternately recessed and omitted entirely, transforming the wall into an open cage. The perforate nature of this upper layer answers the ventilation needs of the cooling equipment but also has a pronounced effect on our reading of the architecture. By day, the band appears visually unstable, endlessly changing as the sun plays on its textured surface; by night internal illumination transforms it into a filigree crown of white light. In both states, what we initially took to be a solid, refractory mass is revealed as a body undergoing a process of evaporation.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/q/o/k/Nord_substation_69web.jpg
Credit: Andrew Lee

With the frame of the McAslan building now in place, it is clear that it will read as one part of a pair with the substation. It is to be clad in corten steel rather than brick but it has adopted the datum line set by Nord’s building as the height of its plinth.

While much the taller of the two, it has also emulated its neighbour’s morphology. Visitors approaching along the land bridge will encounter a crescendo of similarly blocky forms, rising from the substation’s stumpy towers towards the high chimney that rises from the far end of the energy centre.

What is to be built here after 2012 remains undecided but it is likely the substation will find itself encompassed by residential development. If that proves to be the case, Nord’s building will make for a strange but, I am sure, captivating neighbour.

In a site where so much has been swept away and where the buildings that will ultimately occupy it are being constructed in such a short space of time, the substation strikes a powerfully archaic note. Indeed it presents itself as a kind of Ur-project, offering a rudimentary formal vocabulary that subsequent contributors to the park can seize and elaborate.

While the long journey towards making this vast site into a convincing piece of city has only just begun, this beguiling building represents a small but significant step in the right direction.

Norfolk growing over 300,000 Olympic Park wetland plants for UKs largest urban river planting (http://www.london2012.com/news/media-releases/2009-10/norfolk-growing-over-300-000-olympic-park-wetland-plants.php)
9 October 2009

Over 300,000 wetland plants are being grown in Thetford, Norfolk for the 100 hectare Olympic Park.

The UK’s largest ever urban river and wetland planting will help create a colourful riverside setting and festival atmosphere for the London 2012 Games and new space for people and wildlife in legacy.

v

Over 30 species of native reeds, rushes, grasses, sedges, wet wildflowers and irises have been grown initially by Salix in its nursery on the Gower peninsular in Wales with around a third grown from cuttings and seeds collected in and around the Olympic Park before construction started in 2008. The plants are now being grown-on in waterbeds and pallets in Thetford designed and built by the company in Thetford before being planted in the Olympic Park from next spring

The Olympic Park parklands will regenerate and open up the waterways that crisscross the area for the public and wildlife. Visitors to the Park during the Games and in legacy will enjoy sloping riverbanks, new riverside cycle and foot paths, wetlands, reedbeds, ditches and swales, ponds and rare wet woodlands. The wetland plants in these areas will create new habitats for a range of native and rare species.

Visiting Norfolk today ODA Chairman John Armitt said: 'The plants growing in Norfolk will help regenerate the Olympic Park waterways to create habitats for wildlife and help ‘future proof’ the park and surrounding built-up areas against climate change and flooding. Wetlands, ponds, swales and widened rivers bristling with plants will help manage flood water and create fantastic new spaces for the public and wildlife.

'We are on track to start creating the parklands and planting trees shortly and this contract is another great example of the companies across the UK helping to delivery the London 2012 Games working directly for the ODA or our contractors.'

London 2012 Chairman Sebastian Coe said: 'We set out to ensure that the Olympic Park was just that – a park which as well as being home to fantastic sporting venues, can be enjoyed by local residents, visitors and families for generations to come. The fact that these plants are being nurtured in Norfolk shows how the benefits of hosting the Games are being felt far and wide throughout the country – economic benefits for sure, but also a fantastic sense of pride that the entire nation is part of the Games in 2012.'

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: 'The Olympic Park will house a spectacular range of plants and flowers as well as world-class sporting venues that will leave east London with a beautiful park, teeming with wildlife for generations to come. The fact that these plants are growing in Norfolk after starting their life in Wales is further proof that the benefits of London 2012 are being felt across the nation.'

Richard Ellis, chair of East of England Development Agency (EEDA), said: 'It is great news that a London 2012 Games prestigious contract is being delivered from Norfolk. It is testament to the ambition and innovation of businesses in the region to be the best.

'EEDA has invested in the creation and development of the CompeteFor website and nearly 10,000 businesses in the region have already signed up. We continue to invest, in partnership, with Business Link to support for businesses to maximise their opportunities. Workshops are being held in locations across the region over the next few months.'

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has been consulting the London Wetland Centre in Barnes on species selection, planting methods and protection during establishment and with British Waterways on water level management within the park to support the wetland plants. This is alongside consultation with Natural England, the Environment Agency and CABE space.

The Olympic Park will create a green backdrop for the Games and a new green space in legacy for people and wildlife which will host the London 2012 legacy sports facilities including the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velopark, multi-sports arena and Eton Manor outdoor sports complex.

The southern part of the Park will focus on retaining the festival atmosphere from the Games, with riverside gardens, markets, events, cafes and bars. The northern area will use the latest green techniques to manage flood and rain water while providing quieter public space and habitats for hundreds of existing and rare species from kingfishers to otters.

The London Development Agency (LDA) has been leading the legacy planning for the Olympic Park site. This work will be now be taken forward by the new Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), while the LDA will continue to deliver Olympic skills and business opportunities for Londoners.

The ODA is working with the OPLC to ensure the parklands fit into the Legacy Masterplan Framework - a spatial plan for the development of the Olympic Park site after the 2012 Games which will include the long-term management and maintenance of the parklands. For more information about the plans visit www.legacynow.co.uk

This was on the East Anglia news yesterday Darjole!

It's exciting that the plants will be delivered and planted in spring next year, giving them two years to establish.


Wetland Plants Photocall, Thetford Norfolk.

Pictured ODA Chairman John Armitt & Henry Raker from Salix.

Over 300,000 wetland plants are being grown in Thetford, Norfolk in preparation for the UK's largest ever urban river and wetland planting within the 100 hectare Olympic Park.


http://mm.gettyimages.com/mm/actions/layout/preview.do?object=a129187007&redirect=simplified_view

I like the thought that they're planting sooner than later to let everything settle and look less like a line of saplings and tiny shrubs. It's a great drive for the games to set it apart from previous cities :)

I like the thought that they're planting sooner than later to let everything settle and look less like a line of saplings and tiny shrubs. It's a great drive for the games to set it apart from previous cities :)


There is a photo like the one I tried and failed to post above, of another senior 2012 bod walking among acres of saplings due to be planted in the OP. They are also due to be planted next year, which as you say will give the park a mature look, rather than a hurried planting of very young trees and plants.

Those mature trees on the site that could remain were left alone, some have protective barriers around them. Those that had to be removed were cut down and sawn into logs. The logs were stacked around the perimeter, a spade full of earth dumped on top, and left to rot. Log piles are essentially tower blocks for invertebrates and, eventually, stag beetles. They love it. Wildlife will be queueing to get into the park.

This is a serious, planned and co-ordinated environmental clean up of an area that used to be breakers' yards and fridge mountains and travellers' sites. Tremendously exciting.

Is this the one?

http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=olympicparktrees.jpg

Oh, and everything you said above; couldn't agree more.

Hey, what's up with SSC not letting me post pictures

http://img140.imageshack.us/i/olympicparktrees.jpg/

^^ Here's the link to the image. 2000 of these will be planted in the park next year.

olympic park wet lands video> from official site

http://www.london2012.com/blog/2009/10/14/olympic-park-wetlands.php

olympic park wet lands video> from official site

http://www.london2012.com/blog/2009/10/14/olympic-park-wetlands.php

The bridge over the chap's shoulder would be the Eastway? Leading from Hackney Wick to Ruckholt Road?

That's a massive amount of earth moving and banking!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2785/4053109134_c3c2a83ecc_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2711/4053109150_be998d6133_o.jpg

Found this browsing the net tonight, a picture someone took from a plane:

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/7384/dsc00739.jpg


Stadium is obviously visible.

Aquatics Centre roof to the far right in the middle

Just above this will be the water polo venue

Boxy building at the top is the IBC/MBC

Handball arena is being constrcucted in the space surrounded by blue fences just below the IBC/MPC

Hockey venue will be just to the right of the IBC/MPC

Warm up tracks will be built in the bottom left of the photo

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Out of shot, to the right of the photo are the velodrome, bmx circuit, basketball arena and Olympic Village

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Map of the site (http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2855/olympicparkmaptf8.gif)

From kristina_kostadinova onflickr:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2765/4089152883_4f3c5575c2_b.jpg

Another aerial shot of the park from Frans Zwart on Flickr:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2740/4104118052_6d2d74746a_o.jpg

Stunning.

kudos to Frans, that is one amazing photo.

Top right corner is John Walsh tower,those two white buildings, behind is Wanstead Flats, the beginning of Epping Forest. To the lower left of that is St Patrick's cemetery, where Mary Kelly, Jack The Ripper's last victim is buried.

You can see the banking on the Lea.

This is the biggest thing that's hit East London since the Luftwaffe.

Wow, best aerial photo yet. The whole park is going to be stunning.

Those are the best type of shots . Only those show the true scale .

Flythrough of the Olympic park site (Jonathan Edwards presents - official London 2012 video)

http://89.234.19.19/twentytwelve/flythrough_nov09/flythrough_nov09_blog.swf

New aerial images show Olympic Park progress as IOC Coordination Commission visits London
(http://www.london2012.com/news/media-releases/2009-11/new-aerial-images-show-olympic-park-progress-as-ioc-coordination-commission-.php)23 November 2009
london2012.com

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has today released new aerial images of construction work on the Olympic Park showing the ‘big build’ firmly on track as the project enters its toughest year.

The images show the east London skyline being transformed by construction progress on the ‘big five’ venues – the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Olympic Village, Velodrome and International Broadcast Centre/Main Press Centre (IBC/MPC). The images have been released as the International Olympic Committee’s Coordination Commission visits the capital for a progress update on London’s plans for staging the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

ODA Chairman John Armitt, said: 'With construction work on the Olympic Park approaching its peak, the "big five" venues are already becoming landmarks on the east London skyline and show how much progress has been made since the IOC Coordination Commission visited earlier this year.

'The external structure of the Olympic Stadium has been finished and the completion of the Aquatics Centre roof gives us an exciting glimpse of what will become the "gateway to the Games" and the Olympic Park’s most iconic venue. Work is also racing ahead in the north of the Park with the first residential plot of the Village structurally complete, the huge frame of the IBC/MPC in place and the striking architecture of the Velodrome taking shape.

'The Olympic Park "big build" is firmly on track but we are not complacent and these new images show the sheer scale of the project and the challenges ahead as we enter our toughest year in the project.'

Sebastian Coe, Chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee, said: 'In a little under 1,000 days time, the eyes of the world will fall upon this part of east London. The area is being transformed, creating new communities, new housing, and state-of-the-art sporting facilities.

'It is abundantly clear from these photographs that this piece of regeneration is well under way. Over the next year or so, we look forward to seeing the ODA continuing its excellent work so far and seeing the Olympic Park come to life – both for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in 2012 but also for generations to come.'

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: 'The Olympic Park has really started to take shape since the IOC Co-ordination Commission’s last visit with several of the key elements of the build now complete and venues like the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre making a real impact on the London skyline.

'I am confident that we have the measures in place to make sure that this good progress continues, as we head into the most intensive and challenging phase of construction.'

The images released today show how much the Olympic Park has changed since the IOC Coordination Commission visited London in April this year. A new fly-through video of the Olympic Park, narrated by Jonathan Edwards, was also released on the London 2012 website today. The video and latest aerial shots, taken earlier this month, show:

=The Olympic Stadium’s external structure completed with work starting on the lifting of the cable-net roof

=All five new bridges around the Stadium island lifted into place and the first trees planted

=The wave-shaped Aquatics Centre steel roof structure weighing more than 3,000 tonnes lifted and lowered into place, along with the completion of the concrete dive pool and work well underway on the two 50m competition and training pools

=The huge steel frame of International Broadcast Centre (IBC) completed and the Main Press Centre (MPC) coming out of the ground

=The steelwork forming the distinct double-curved structure of the Velodrome approaching the halfway point

=The first residential block in the Olympic Village structurally complete and work well underway on all other residential plots

=The foundations of the Handball Arena nearing completion

=The Energy Centre taking shape and the Primary Substation building finished – the first building on the Park to be completed

=Work well underway on 21 of more than 30 new bridges to be built in the Park.

Olympic Park
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2590/4127167445_105f723250_b.jpg

Athlete's Village
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2802/4127167451_b65095e55d_b.jpg

Aquatic Centre
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2540/4127167459_01f6596c65_b.jpg

Handball Arena
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2659/4127167461_7b3ace2704_b.jpg

Energy Centre
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2562/4127167467_3e768ae84f_b.jpg

Velodrome
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2590/4127167475_38422119ea_b.jpg

Velodrome
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2551/4127178403_a1f8be4d85_b.jpg

Olympic Stadium
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2761/4127942228_af75afc7fb_b.jpg

Athlete's Village
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2544/4127948108_6789aa8c50_b.jpg

Olympic Park (looking north)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2556/4127948618_ed2b86b4bb_b.jpg

Olympic Park (looking south)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2595/4127179241_e36e138bfb_b.jpg

Olympic Stadium
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2617/4127951142_b06a77b39f_b.jpg

Aquatics Centre & Olympic Stadium
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2716/4127951534_f87786d7ee_b.jpg

Olympic Stadium
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2687/4127955486_ffe54f5fd9_b.jpg

Good website with aerial views of London, especially the Olympic park.

http://www.vrwebdesign.co.uk/london-aerial-virtual-tour/

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/485/greenbuildontrack.gif