Boris unveils his 'legacy masterplan' for 2012 site

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23638232-details/Boris+unveils+his+'legacy+masterplan'+for+2012+site/article.do

Mayor Boris Johnson published the futuristic proposals as he seeks planning permission for the 500-acre site.

Locals will be consulted over the next six weeks on plans to add schools and housing to the sports venues which will remain after the Games.

Today's plans were devised by the London Development Agency and are a response to the Mayor's criticism - after his election - of the lack of legacy planning.

The "legacy masterplan" promises seven new schools, 10,000 new homes and the creation of 10,000 new jobs.

The £547million Olympic stadium will be reduced in capacity to 27,000 from 80,000 after the Games and will primarily operate as an athletics venue. Its undercroft will house a sports academy for about 400 secondary school pupils, and several public sports bodies are being lined up as co-tenants.

The English Institute of Sport, experts in sports science, and a new National Skills Academy for sports and leisure industries will set up offices at the stadium. But, as the Evening Standard revealed last month, the blueprint confirms that a proposed groundshare between Leyton Orient and a Premiership rugby club has failed because of their objections to the design.

The other major new venues - the aquatics centre and velodrome - will be used by schools and local sports clubs. The LDA will hand over the task of bringing in private investors to a legacy company which will be formed this year.

Mr Johnson said: "One of my main concerns was always the lack of a clear vision for the legacy that would be left for east London from the huge investment we were making. Now I believe that the future for this most deprived area is spectacularly bright."

Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham, said: "We want this to be a place that provides opportunities for local people and becomes a real powerhouse for prosperity in the capital."

Images are pure work of imagination
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23638231-details/Images+are+pure+work+of+imagination/article.do)Rowan Moore
10.02.09

What the latest images show is an updated version of what we have long been promised: "vibrant" and "thriving" communities, new homes, new jobs, a lush and immaculate Olympic Park at the heart.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/boris-masterplan-415x275.jpg

They are the latest of the radiant green-and-blue computer images that have been used to sell 2012, which look as different as possible as the grimy places that Stratford and Hackney Wick used to be.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/2/10/1234276594506/Artists-impression-of-how-001.jpg

And who could not want new homes, jobs, and perfectly balanced new neighbourhoods? Who could not want a modern version of Regent's Park, with elegant residences?

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/boris-masterplan3-415x275.jpg

But the big, not yet quite answered, questions are: where is the money coming from and who is going to build it? The private sector is going to lack will and ability to build at this scale in this unproven location for many more years, even allowing for a possible upturn sometime in the next five years. The images sensibly show the legacy in 2040, sufficiently far in the future to hope that something might by then happen, although this leaves open the question of what might happen on all this empty space in the meanwhile.

The other question is whether the beautiful computer images will translate into equally beautiful architecture. This hasn't happened with the buildings for the games themselves, where the venues, the village and the spaces between, have been ground down into more mundane reality than that suggested by the early images.

It is not encouraging that the Athletes' Village has been bailed out and reduced to its minimum possible size.

We were also promised, with the Athletes' Village, vibrancy and beauty, but we are getting a slightly-above-average housing development.

It is possible that the Mayor and the LDA have answers to these questions, but they are not evident at this moment. Without such answers, today's images are pure works of the imagination.

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Rowan. I totally agree with your comments,it is absolutely preposterous to say what stratford will look like in 2040,also can one of the 'demigods' at the ODA please explain why two thirds of the olympic stadium will have to be removed after the games,one can only assume that after the olympics,never again will an athletes event fill the stadium.
- David, olympic fantasyland

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! What an idiot. The only reason for articles like the above and the comment is that people are just looking for something to moan about.

Seems quite optimisitc nonetheless. Make sure the legacy plans for what's already being built come to fruition; that is most important thing right now. The other developments will have more of a chance of following afterwards if that's done correctly.

How does this grand vision differ from what was around when Ken was chief big wig?

It looks very similar to what has gone before with previous visions including the original Stratford city proposal. Is that what Boris's grand plan is, a few thousand more homes & some schools all to be built within 31 years ( can anybody remember what 1978 was like?).

Dunno what Rowan is moaning about either. All you can see of the computer generated images is some shiny massing blocks so you can't tell what the architecture is proposed. Hes been busy today, in another article under the headline "Dont let the towers take over" he slags of 100 Middlesex St.

Olympic legacy masterplan revealed
propertyweek
17:55 | 10.02.09

By Deirdre Hipwell

The Olympic Legacy masterplan was unveiled today and proposes to create six new ‘character areas’ comprising 10,000 new homes and more than 1.2m sq ft of commercial space.

It will also see the creation of one of Europe's largest parks, three secondary schools, a primary school, and a sports centre and national skills academy which will located in the main stadium.


The preferred masterplan option, called the Legacy Masterplan Framework, was unveiled by the mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympic minister Tessa Jowell, secretary of state for communities and local government Hazel Blears, and Newham Council leader Robin Wales at a press conference today.

The six 'character areas' will be created within the Olympic Park and are:

* Stratford Village - which includes plans for 1,480 homes, a primary school and a new local high street;

* Hackney Wick East - which includes plans for the development of the broadcast and media centrem 2,070 homes, a 6,000 seater stadium;

* Stratford Waterfront - which includes plans for 1,850 units, the quatics centre, a clinic and waterfront uses;

* Olympic Quarter - which includes plans for the stadium, 2,50 housing units, Olympic gardens and a school focuses on sport;

* Pudding Mill - which includes plans for stadium, 1,460 homes, 695,000 sq m of commerical space and cafes and restaurants

* Old Ford Summary - which includes plans for 1,150 homes, a primary school, and a marina retainign the Old Ford Lock structure.


All the areas will include other leisure amenities and as part of the plan the Aquatics Centre and Velodrome will be retained for future sporting use.


Johnson said: ‘One of my main concerns was always the lack of a clear vision for the legacy that would be left for east London from the huge investment we were making in staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games...Today after many months of hard work, I am delighted to be able to present that clear vision. It shows how we plan to use the investment in new transport, new infrastructure and new world class facilities as the backbone of a fantastic new place to live.’

The launch today will be followed by a six-week consultation and a series of public events before the plan is submitted for outline planning consent.

Tom Russell, LDA group director of Olympic Legacy, said: ‘The legacy masterplan will be part of a wider economic, social and physical regeneration strategy which looks at the future development of the areas around the Olympic site.’

EDAW, Allies & Morrison and KCAP are masterplanners.

How does this grand vision differ from what was around when Ken was chief big wig?

Nope. It's just a bit more of a polished animation really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/10/olympic-games-london-2012-university

2040 legacy parkland looking south with Canary Wharf in the horizon

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=623403113a6d033eefa075bbaa96555045a032d0732927057.jpg

2040 legacy parkland looking north with wind turbine and velopark in the background

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=1492468629715d686425a62f87ab2e5ca1fbe00c741a8f748c.jpg

2040 stadium looking south

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=23789894689d41a6aa4949672caacb3e1d6b06200150ffebd.jpg

2040 aerial view of the legacy park

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=15825246132767442589e4ee5961c595490e31ebb63ae9c2f8.jpg

Aerial view of Stratford Village

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=52267202806711b38cb20ceabc4956d6120225eab1703f143.jpg

Aerial view of Hackney Wick East

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=19057180359f624f1c6ac472110b142840df0364347eb22eaa.jpg

Aerial view of Old Ford

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=12273579016ab1cf2b583178325652b7a6c9a29804377293eb.jpg

Aerial view of Stratford Waterfront

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=368253419940548267b32448dcc8c03d6657211650db488f2.jpg

Aerial view of Olympic Quarter

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=102748962e71ce5f81c1c2aad8e2f509fee32fceeb831e242.jpg

Aerial view of Pudding Mill

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=500030398da6f376c251207126a0233b045c35d8cd65608b2.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Stratford Village may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=654919798fb0dff17129ea8ce1cea0e8d81dd6a2b027a6e26.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Hackney Wick East may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=259389775b379e79f11fca6b51ea24b2e76a449b35399a66d.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Old Ford may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=97368395918dede6a08d2fad7298449227f95f727d601f91e.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Stratford Waterfront may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=1625768782c42d15b152f99f39cdc5d16b6130089f5c8b2782.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Olympic Quarter may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=129495530175f961c5e971b45ad9d977123e87e98cb3f0ef75.jpg

An illustrative image showing what Pudding Mill may look like in legacy mode

http://www.legacy-now.co.uk/imagebig.php?f=181595636378dde8825a6c88689f13e13900898a5c2a1cf2a.jpg

Olympic masterplan would help regenerate east London but fails to ease money worries (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/london2012/4583100/Olympic-masterplan-would-help-regenerate-east-London-but-fails-to-ease-money-worries.html)
By Simon Hart
Last Updated: 7:36PM GMT 10 Feb 2009

An ambitious masterplan was launched on Tuesday to create new homes, schools and businesses in the Olympic Park in east London after the 2012 Games, though the absence of any private investment has raised concerns about the potential drain on the public purse.

The plan includes proposals for 10,000 new homes in addition to the 3,000 units already under construction for the Olympic village, as well as a new business hub around the media and broadcast centre and an 'Olympic university'.

The Olympic Stadium will also be the location for a new secondary school along with a national skills academy for the sport and leisure industry and a centre for the English Institute of Sport.

The plan, if fulfilled, would bring about a major regeneration of one of the poorest areas of the country, delivering as many as 10,000 extra jobs.

But with private investment increasingly hard to come by in the recession, the fear is that tax-payers will have to shoulder the cost of the post-Games legacy, taking the overall bill well beyond the Olympic budget of £9.3 billion.
London mayor Boris Johnson said he remained hopeful that private money would be attracted to what he described as a "fantastic legacy" for the Olympic Park.

He added: "It's our intention to use the £9.3 billion to ensure that we are able to attract investors from around the UK and around the world to this area and I think the £9.3 billion is good seed money."

Finding an effective post-2012 use for the main Olympic Stadium, the cost of which could now rise to a worst-case scenario of £547 million, will be one of the key things the Games will be judged on but there is now little hope of attracting an anchor tenant.

League One football club Leyton Orient and Premiership rugby clubs Saracens and Wasps have reportedly become the latest to withdraw their interest in relocating to the stadium after West Ham earlier failed to reach agreement.

Instead, the stadium, which will be downsized to a capacity of 25,000 after the Games, will host international and domestic athletics meetings as well as grass-roots sports and other events such as music concerts.

But that it is unlikely to generate the revenue to cover the stadium's running costs, and Johnson confirmed that a promise made by former mayor Ken Livingstone to provide £10 million a year to run the Olympic Park after 2012 would be honoured.

Olympic masterplan would help regenerate east London but fails to ease money worries (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/london2012/4583100/Olympic-masterplan-would-help-regenerate-east-London-but-fails-to-ease-money-worries.html)
By Simon Hart
Last Updated: 7:36PM GMT 10 Feb 2009

An ambitious masterplan was launched on Tuesday to create new homes, schools and businesses in the Olympic Park in east London after the 2012 Games, though the absence of any private investment has raised concerns about the potential drain on the public purse.

The plan includes proposals for 10,000 new homes in addition to the 3,000 units already under construction for the Olympic village, as well as a new business hub around the media and broadcast centre and an 'Olympic university'.

The Olympic Stadium will also be the location for a new secondary school along with a national skills academy for the sport and leisure industry and a centre for the English Institute of Sport.

The plan, if fulfilled, would bring about a major regeneration of one of the poorest areas of the country, delivering as many as 10,000 extra jobs.

But with private investment increasingly hard to come by in the recession, the fear is that tax-payers will have to shoulder the cost of the post-Games legacy, taking the overall bill well beyond the Olympic budget of £9.3 billion.
London mayor Boris Johnson said he remained hopeful that private money would be attracted to what he described as a "fantastic legacy" for the Olympic Park.

He added: "It's our intention to use the £9.3 billion to ensure that we are able to attract investors from around the UK and around the world to this area and I think the £9.3 billion is good seed money."

Finding an effective post-2012 use for the main Olympic Stadium, the cost of which could now rise to a worst-case scenario of £547 million, will be one of the key things the Games will be judged on but there is now little hope of attracting an anchor tenant.

League One football club Leyton Orient and Premiership rugby clubs Saracens and Wasps have reportedly become the latest to withdraw their interest in relocating to the stadium after West Ham earlier failed to reach agreement.

Instead, the stadium, which will be downsized to a capacity of 25,000 after the Games, will host international and domestic athletics meetings as well as grass-roots sports and other events such as music concerts.

But that it is unlikely to generate the revenue to cover the stadium's running costs, and Johnson confirmed that a promise made by former mayor Ken Livingstone to provide £10 million a year to run the Olympic Park after 2012 would be honoured.

Isn't that something of a U-turn? :lol:

@LondonLad
I dont see big changes from Ken vision too.

---------

2040 is a bit far but it's very good to have clearer vision in terms of massing and patterns. I'm quite pleased with the overall proportions and urban grain.

---------

Does anyone know if phasing will be known soon?

:lol: now Rowan Moore is complaining about long term master planning!

Small firms will design 2012 legacy buildings, insist masterplanners
(http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3133698&c=1&encCode=00000000018fb8f4)11 February, 2009
By Marguerite Lazell

Small practices will get the chance to design parts of the 2012 Olympic legacy masterplan, directors from the three firms leading the masterplanning have insisted.

Speaking at the unveiling of the 102ha masterplan on Tuesday, KCAP director Markus Appenzeller joined colleagues from Edaw and Allies & Morrison in insisting that McDowell & Benedetti, Caruso St John, Haworth Tompkins, Maccreanor Lavington, Panter Hudspith and S333 would work on six “character areas” within the site in 2010.

This follows fears reported in BD a year ago that up-and-coming talent could be squeezed out by the larger firms.

“They’re going to get involved,” Appenzeller said. “One scenario is you give those [character areas] to a number of those offices. It’s good to have someone test your ideas.”

The highly ambitious masterplan, which was unveiled by London mayor Boris Johnson, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell and communities secretary Hazel Blears includes 10-12,000 new homes, of which 35% will be affordable.

It also comprises three new primary schools, a secondary school at the main stadium, and a new university replacing the International Broadcast Centre, which will be demolished in stages after the games.

But there were no details provided on funding and how the plans will cope with the current lack of private sector investment.

Blears said it was impossible to predict the private/public sector split of the legacy’s funding.

“In the current climate we need to make sure the development goes ahead, and we get value for money,” she said. “There will be an upturn, and this region needs to be in the best place to take advantage of that. We mustn’t lower our aspirations.”

The main stadium, designed by HOK Sport, will be downsized from 80,000 to 25,000 seats, to host events and house the English Institute of Sport and a new National Skills Academy for sports and leisure industries as well as the new school.

Appenzeller told BD the design team would be pressing for the forthcoming legacy delivery company in charge of the plans to include a design review panel.

The legacy proposals will be put out to public consultation for six weeks. An outline planning application is expected to be made in late summer.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/t/h/b/Legacy_Neighbourhoods_WEB.jpg

It also comprises three new primary schools, a secondary school at the main stadium, and a new university replacing the International Broadcast Centre, which will be demolished in stages after the games??:ohno:

The park and the housing will be a quite nice legacy. Plus some of the other local facilities such as schools. Anything else that is left behind will just be a white elephant, inluding the stadium. The more stuff we can do as temporary structures to be removed after the games the better as far as I am concerned.

The park and the housing will be a quite nice legacy. Plus some of the other local facilities such as schools. Anything else that is left behind will just be a white elephant, inluding the stadium. The more stuff we can do as temporary structures to be removed after the games the better as far as I am concerned.


God yeah. Why does London need another 50m pool & cycle track when we have already got a 40 year old one at Crystal Palace and the original velodrome from the last last Olympics at Herne Hill. Just demolish the lot of em.

:).....We don't have decent venues in this country for athletics, all the stadiums are for bloddy football!

I really hope it doesn't take twenty eight years to look like this. I know Boris is factoring in recessions but I would have hoped something like this would happen in a decade, fifteen years at the most.

I would hope by 2040 the Park would extend down the Thames and its impact on creating new housing suburbs being felt as far away as Ilford in the east and Bethnal Green in the west...

God yeah. Why does London need another 50m pool & cycle track when we have already got a 40 year old one at Crystal Palace and the original velodrome from the last last Olympics at Herne Hill. Just demolish the lot of em.

I take it you are planning on becoming a triathlete once the games are over?

You are taking humbridge at my post but I am actually very positive about these games. What I am saying is that you dont have to have a whole load of fully utilised fancy sporting facilities, media centres and so on to be able to declare a sucessful legacy. In fact, that seems to be the most elusive element of the legacy process. A top quality park and decent new housing would be a great result. I dont think it is a cop out to have a temporary structure and wont necessarily detract from the event itself if done well. If we get a well used pool and cycle track on top of that its a bonus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFN_pxbeJ0

Most facilities can break even. It's just they don't make a lot of money, which is a problem for some and they'd rather sell the land. I've been really encouraged to read that Higher education is looking to associate itself with the area. Think of a stand as building with a stepped roof and suddenly it can be seen as a money making opportunity set within a beautiful park.

The only facilities that don't make money are the wet ones. Water doesn't make money. If a gym has a pool attached it's subsidised by other parts of the club. But if Fitness First and the like think pools are worthwhile why not the country as a whole? What price sporting success? What price a fitter population? Whatever your opinion The UK amongst developed countries is right at the bottom. Paris has over 20 50m pools, London has one - currently closed and too narrow to host a competition. Can't we even aim to be second from bottom?

I really like the masterplan, I do hope we get quality architecture though. This is a real opportunity to do something special.

Manchester's velodrome teams, most of the UK athletics investments for years to come... and the nation paying off all of your debts!

Liverpool should have one too!

I really hope it doesn't take twenty eight years to look like this. I know Boris is factoring in recessions but I would have hoped something like this would happen in a decade, fifteen years at the most.

I would hope by 2040 the Park would extend down the Thames and its impact on creating new housing suburbs being felt as far away as Ilford in the east and Bethnal Green in the west...

I suspect the 2040 date was just given to give the park time to 'grow in'. Unless they plan on replanting adult trees in the park - which is very costly and normally not very successful, it's gonna take 20 years or so for the tree cover within the park to reach a 'generally park-like' level.

Of course, it wont stop people from complaining in 2015 when they go to the park about how they thought it'll be this nice woodland area and all that's there are tiny little seedlings.

Of course, it wont stop people from complaining in 2015 when they go to the park about how they thought it'll be this nice woodland area and all that's there are tiny little seedlings.

Most of the trees though being planted in the Park, even for the Games, will be full size. The aim is not to have an Athens or Beijing where everything is new but to make the Park look like it has been there for a few years already. Even when they demolished the buildings on site they kept a lot of the existing greenery, especially along the banks of the canals and around the velodrome.

Once they release the legacy building stages, showing where and when they intend to convert the areas of the Park into these neighbourhoods, we'll get a bigger picture of how long this will all take to do. I'm just impatient, I'll be 32 when the Games happen, I don't want to have to wait until I'm 60 to see the full legacy of the Games just around Stratford.

I really doubt the trees will be 'full size' unless they're going for smaller or conifer trees anyway.

Practically, and economically, the absolutely maximum age for a large scale planting like this is with trees up to 12 years old. At this age, depending on species, they could be about 4-5m tall. Anything older than that and you're looking at £2000 per tree and for a park this size you're easily looking at a couple of thousand trees needing to be planted. Generally, when planted new woodland in parks, it's normally done by mixing mature trees - maybe 100-200 max, with whips - a couple of thousand or so around 2-3 foot high. The mature trees gives an idea of a mature park, but it's not until the whips grow do you really see the whole effect.

And, to get it done so that it properly 'looks like' it's been there for a few years already, would mean that at the latest, for the games, the whole park would need to be planted out by Autumn/Winter 2011.

And, to get it done so that it properly 'looks like' it's been there for a few years already, would mean that at the latest, for the games, the whole park would need to be planted out by Autumn/Winter 2011.

I think that's what they intend to do.

The images on pg 1 look great...BUT they state 2040..... how about 2013 after the games have been and gone..2040 !!! I'll have popped my cloggs by then and I like many other workers are paying for this HOW about a legacy for us who will be paying for this?

In 2013, most of the park will be a building site again.

By 2015 I think the whole public areas of the park will be reopened and will start to look like those pictures - although I suspect some of the sites will still be in the process of being rebuilt and most, if not all the trees will not be as big as those in the pictures.

Does "(after 2012)" need to be in the thread title?

In 2013, most of the park will be a building site again.

By 2015 I think the whole public areas of the park will be reopened and will start to look like those pictures - although I suspect some of the sites will still be in the process of being rebuilt and most, if not all the trees will not be as big as those in the pictures.

Hopefully by then too the economy will of rebounded somewhat and we will see developers working up schemes to fill the masterplan up. But if we are talking about Legacy here why don't we try and build homes that are above the standard of normal housing in the uk, i.e not rabbit hutches. This surely would be something to aspire too and become a real legacy to this part of London.

Let’s have an Olympic legacy like this
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23644450-details/Let’s+have+an+Olympic+legacy+like+this/article.do)Rowan Moore
17.02.09

Last week, two ministers and two mayors faced the press, and spoke with joy about a shining new city that was flashing up in luxuriant green-and-blue images on screens at their flanks. One of the politicians, Boris Johnson, was Tory, and the other three - Tessa Jowell, Hazel Blears and the mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales - were Labour, but they all agreed that the Olympic legacy of 10,000 or more new homes, four new schools and 10,000 jobs was simply marvellous.

The place they were describing is la-la-land, a fantasy world, the kingdom of the birds. They have little apparent clue where the money is going to come from and are pinning their hopes on private developers pumping out the thousands of residences required at exemplary levels of quality and beauty. This despite the fact that the private sector signally failed to deliver the athletes' village unaided and had to be bailed out with public money. The village is a mere 3,000 homes in the most desirable part of the Olympic zone. What, hope, then, for the rest?

These may be hard times which will some day pass but the private sector has never in recent decades delivered what was twirling round the screens: a development of this scale in what is, from developers' points of view, a risky, pioneer location. They prefer to proceed in small, low-risk increments. The nearest equivalent to the proposed legacy is the far smaller Greenwich Millennium Village, which, despite £200 million of public investment, has tottered to its current 1,100 homes over the course of a decade of unprecedented boom. Another 1,800 homes are promised there in the future.

Equally optimistic is the idea that crowds of 25,000 will come to see athletics at the post-Olympic stadium, when the most that existing athletics venues draw is about 3,000. Ditto the idea that the million-square-foot media centre will become a job-creating hub of business. This is vast - the same size as the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf - but in an ill-favoured spot, a Siberia of patchy public transport and not much else.

In other words the legacy plan embodies a philosophy that is now looking very out-of-date. It is founded on the idea that private developers and contractors and their friends the banks are wise and omnipotent in all things, and that we can entrust to them the delivery of great works for the common public good.

If the business plan for the legacy seems to have been put together by swivel-eyed Professor Branestawms in a laboratory full of exploding test tubes, the architectural plans are sober to a fault. Showing dense apartment blocks distributed about the perimeter of the park in largely square-ish arrangements, they resemble more the stock-taking inventory of a stationery business: a catalogue of grades of Manila.

The legacy masterplan is the work of three practices, EDAW, Allies and Morrison, and the Dutch KCAP. All have a reputation for competence and professionalism. KCAP is the most radical of the three, and EDAW, which carried out the much-praised revitalisation of Manchester's centre, the most conservative. Allies and Morrison is somewhere in the middle. They are a slightly odd trio, the choice of clients who want to hedge their bets (some safe pairs of hands, a dash of Dutch vim) rather than set a vision and find the best person to achieve it.

Jason Prior of EDAW says that the current plans are the result of unprecedented levels of research. The plan is faultless for the way it shows a sensible provision of schools and a mixture of sources of employment. It meticulously gathers up and lays out all the good ideas anyone has had about planning in the past 20 or more years: that it's good for places to be active at street level and good to consult people, that it's good to be sustainable, to encourage biodiversity and "productive landscapes" where people can grow their own fruit and vegetables.

Prior also stresses the importance of one of the plan's main ideas, which is to divide the site into six neighbourhoods, each one taking its character from the things around it. Sadly, these places are limply named. Pudding Mill Lane is described as "work-live with a unique waterways relationship".

Another, Hackney Wick East, is a "learning, living and working neighbourhood". Old Ford is a "peninsula with distinct water frontages".

Despite frequent use of words like "unique", "distinctive", "character" and "vibrant", the plan currently looks bland and sparkless. Prior argues that the plan will take more than 20 years, that many different architects will design the individual elements and that therefore it would be wrong to show the housing blocks in any detail. This is a fair point, but what is lacking is any big idea to drive the great project forward and strengthen it against the assaults of compromise and expediency.

New settlements at the scale of the legacy masterplan need such ideas. Sir John Nash's creation of Regent's Park, which like the legacy plan involved putting dense but desirable housing around a green space, was governed by the idea of applying the ideas of picturesque gardens to town planning.

In recent years the Borneo Sporenburg development in Amsterdam's old docks was guided by the desire to find ways of achieving high densities with houses that rarely rise above three storeys. The district of Hammarby in Stockholm set out to pioneer new levels of sustainable development, and succeeded. Both these developments started in the Nineties, are hugely successful, and are now imitated all over the world, including by the planners of London's Olympic legacy.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/olympicsleg1702_415x207.jpg
Swedish model: the Hammarby district, regenerated as part of Stockholm’s unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Olympics, has become a model for sustainable developmen

It would even be possible to learn something from the Palm, the artificial peninsula built off the coast of Dubai. For all the financial travails that Dubai is now suffering, the Palm is a brilliant device. It takes sand and seawater and combines them to create dozens of miles of something valuable, beach. At the same time it has created an image that is now world-famous.

Hammarby was due to be Stockholm's athletes' village had it won its bid for the 2004 Games. Why then could not London's Olympics generate something equally brilliant, and influential? We are bigger than Stockholm, Amsterdam and Dubai, and - unlike them - we actually got the Games. Exactly what this big idea might be (and it is of the nature of such things that they are different from their predecessors) can only come from stronger leadership than the Olympic legacy has yet been given.

Right now the legacy plans are back- to-front. The hard practical stuff of funding and delivery is in the realm of fantasy, while the place where an inspirational idea should be is occupied by dutiful box-ticking. Both need to be sorted out. Creating "world class" new communities will almost certainly require more public funding than has yet been offered. It will need government to step in rather than leave it to developers. It will require leadership from whoever is put in charge of the project.

Without these things last week's press conference was an exercise in wishful thinking and cant, and a prelude to a long slide into underachievement. With them, fine new places to live can be created.

I know I am going to get killed for this question, but anyway, here I go:

Why are they not leaving the olympic stadium as it is (no downsizing) and demolish crystal palace instead?

And why can't they limit Wembley to being a pure soccer stadium and organise the other events in the Olympic stadium?

What is the problem with the track for soccer and rugby events? I think the athmosphere in the Stade de France is great for rugby and soccer and the track never distriburbed me. It also did not disturb me in the old Wembley... in fact I think the atmosphere in the old Wembley appeared to be better than in the new stadium but that may be subjective.

And if London had to organise some large athletics events, as many cities in Europe do every year, where would it be held? In Paris it is in the Stade de France, but where would it be in London?

All those questions and more have been answered numerous times in the dedicated stadium thread.

Images are pure work of imagination
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23638231-details/Images+are+pure+work+of+imagination/article.do)

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/boris-masterplan-415x275.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/2/10/1234276594506/Artists-impression-of-how-001.jpg

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/boris-masterplan3-415x275.jpg


absolutely beautiful. i want to live in a place like that

I know I am going to get killed for this question, but anyway, here I go:

Why are they not leaving the olympic stadium as it is (no downsizing) and demolish crystal palace instead?

And why can't they limit Wembley to being a pure soccer stadium and organise the other events in the Olympic stadium?

What is the problem with the track for soccer and rugby events? I think the athmosphere in the Stade de France is great for rugby and soccer and the track never distriburbed me. It also did not disturb me in the old Wembley... in fact I think the atmosphere in the old Wembley appeared to be better than in the new stadium but that may be subjective.

And if London had to organise some large athletics events, as many cities in Europe do every year, where would it be held? In Paris it is in the Stade de France, but where would it be in London?

I must admit I completely agree with you, I know it has been discussed lots before in the statium thread etc. I know everyone says it's not sustainable and would be a white elephant, but quite frankly I think that is just a cop-out! Wembley should be completely dedicated to football, which would be perfectly sufficient.. all internationals, cup finals, charity games, etc.

Then all the random events that are held there (and impinge on the footy), plus clearly all athletics events, would be held in the Olympic Stadium. It would become London's dedicated multipurpose stadium. Rock concerts which obviously fill to capacity and are very regular, the annual NFL game (which now fills Wembley but ruined the pitch for football), motorsport displays like the F1 thing held in Wembley last year, maybe even monster trucking(?!) and obviously all major athletics events would be held. I think with some imagination this all could have been possible.

London would then have three stadia seating 80000+, one for football, one for rugby, and one for everything else. This could have been easily achievable I think and would have certainly provided enough capacity events to merit the stadium remaining at 80000 and being sustainable. Plus then 550mil could have been used to easily design and build something fantastic that isn't a dull, crappy temporary structure that will be basically half demolished in a few years... That's no legacy! But a truly great stadium (that didn't have to worry about being demolished) that held a huge variety of big events for the people of London and the UK to enjoy, certainly would be

I must admit I completely agree with you, I know it has been discussed lots before in the statium thread etc. I know everyone says it's not sustainable and would be a white elephant, but quite frankly I think that is just a cop-out! Wembley should be completely dedicated to football, which would be perfectly sufficient.. all internationals, cup finals, charity games, etc.

Then all the random events that are held there (and impinge on the footy), plus clearly all athletics events, would be held in the Olympic Stadium. It would become London's dedicated multipurpose stadium. Rock concerts which obviously fill to capacity and are very regular, the annual NFL game (which now fills Wembley but ruined the pitch for football), motorsport displays like the F1 thing held in Wembley last year, maybe even monster trucking(?!) and obviously all major athletics events would be held. I think with some imagination this all could have been possible.


Wembley isn't a publically owned stadium! You can't just take events away from it willy-nilly - events which Wembley plc would have worked hard to win the rights to host - because there's a publically owned stadium which doesn't have a use! Wembley needs to make a profit too and the ways it does this is to host concerts, NFL, race of champions, rugby league, private functions etc. etc. as well as football. You'd be replacing one very hypothetical problem (what to do with a large permanent Olympic stadium after the games) with a very real one (a loss making national football stadium that has had its profit making ability completely and utterly hampered).

Unless it became the tenant for a club like Spurs (for whom it'd only be two thirds full anyway), Wembley could never be profitable as a football only stadium. A few domestic cup finals, semi-finals, a few play-off matches and a handfull of England games would not be enough or anything like enough to keep a stadium of that size running.

Your suggestion is a non-starter. Unless, that is, you think the taxpayer should compensate Wembley for loss of profits and maintain a loss-making 90,000 seat stadium at Wembley rather than a loss-making 25,000 seat stadium at Stratford post-2012.

All those questions and more have been answered numerous times in the dedicated stadium thread.

There has been debate but I am not sure there is a consensus. For sure there is no clarity.

1. What is going to happen with Crystal Palace after the games? Because after the downsizing of the Olympic stadium London will have two athletics stadia of similar sizes. You do not need a stadium to have a running track for a school. What is the point of having two athletics stadia in the same city, none of which is big enough to host large international events?

2. If the aim of the Olympics is to promote sport, then why does the UK not want to maintain at least one athletics stadium which allows it to host major events which would continue to promote athletics? It is kind of strange to first construct it to promote sport and then to destory it such that no other prominent international events can be held there. Athletics promotion is no longer critical after the 2012 Olympics?

3. I agree with the view that stadia should be used as well as possible. Now Wembley got largely financed with lottery money. So it belongs to the public, as much as the Olympic Stadium does. What is the problem with a soccer team moving to Wembley (kind of logical; after all it is a soccer stadium) and Wembley in return giving up all music and entertainment events which could move to the Olympic stadium?

4. What is the problem with the track in a stadium used for soccer events? All over Europe this is the case and I have never noticed the atmosphere to be worse for it. In fact the old Wembley had a track and nobody ever complained about that; its atmosphere was certainly much better than the new Wembley. If they care so much about atmosphere, they should probably reintroduce standing sections ....

5. How much is the cost to downsize it and how many years of maintenance cost does this cover? It seems to me that it is not just ripping out some seats but that effectively the complete structure needs to be altered. If they want to keep a roof (as they claim) it is not just about adjusting the size of the roof sail because in fact the masts holding up the roof structure are connected to the temporary part of the stadium. Considering the cost of the construction; it may cost them abother £100 mio to put it into legacy mode. That probably covers 10-20 years of maintenance.


I am sure they have though about all of this but allow me to say that whatever the reasons are; they remain a puzzle to me.

Only once every 20 odd years would an athletics event of that size come along. It'll be more than adequate at 25,000. It'd be a big white elephant otherwise.

None of the football or rugby clubs want a track so whilst you may think there's nothing wrong with a track at matches, the likely tennants do; so that's a no-go and has prooved to be so.

Wembley got some finance through lottery money, not "largely financed" as you claim. So it doesn't belong to the public in the same way as the Olympic Stadium as you claim it does.

Spurs want their own stadium in Tottenham. West Ham want their own in West Ham. Wembley is too big for any soccer team in London to have as their home and isn't in the right area. So, once you've moved these events from Wembley as you want to you're left with a huge stadum which only hosts a handful of events a year!

The Olympic Stadium budget includes the cost of converting to legacy.

There are so many problems with your suggestion. Your moving things around - as well as not being possible as the government and ODA can't just take events from Wembley or force clubs to move into unsuitable stadiums - just creates more problems than it solves.

Only once every 20 odd years would an athletics event of that size come along. It'll be more than adequate at 25,000. It'd be a big white elephant otherwise.

No, the IAAF organises multiple "Golden League" events every year. Paris is always on the schedule and they are able to fill up the Stade de France every time. In fact, in the SdF there are a few "sell out" atlethics events ever year.

If you do not believe me:

http://www.time-to-run.com/track/goldenleague/

None of the football or rugby clubs want a track so whilst you may think there's nothing wrong with a track at matches, the likely tennants do; so that's a no-go and has prooved to be so.

No, it is not just up to the tenants. It is also up to the architects; most stadia in Europe with a track are adjustable with seating sliding out on the track when it is not needed. Have a look at a picture of the the Stade de France during a rugby game: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Rugby_match.jpg. Maybe it is too late to do anything about this in the London Olympic stadium at this stage; it did not have to be.

Wembley got some finance through lottery money, not "largely financed" as you claim. So it doesn't belong to the public in the same way as the Olympic Stadium as you claim it does.

No it was largely finance by lottery and government money.
£120 mio Sport England Lottory Fund
£21 mio from the LDA
£20 mio from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

This amount was then fully subordinated, as in the typical public sector finance deal, to raise debt for a total amount of £430 mio was sourced from West LB.

I agree with you the that FA is the current owner and they paid as well, but less than the government. Let's not forget the degree of involvement of the government in getting the new Wembley Stadium constructed... that should have made clear this is a public project. Everybody arguing that Wembley does not belong to the public is fooling himself. In fact, it belongs so much to the public that the reason the government does not want a competing stadium is that if Wembley does not generate enough money the government will be on the hook for the West LB loan. So the tax-payers have the downside and the FA the upside. Typical Jowell brainpower.


Spurs want their own stadium in Tottenham. West Ham want their own in West Ham. Wembley is too big for any soccer team in London to have as their home and isn't in the right area.

I am pretty sure Chelsea could fill it up for every home game.

The Olympic Stadium budget includes the cost of converting to legacy.

No it doesn'tt. The conversion to legacy mode has to come out of the £230 mio legacy conversion fund; of which insiders already say it will not be enough.


There are so many problems with your suggestion. Your moving things around - as well as not being possible as the government and ODA can't just take events from Wembley or force clubs to move into unsuitable stadiums - just creates more problems than it solves.

Sorry, unless you prove me wrong on any of these points you have not given me a single valid counter argument. You have also not touched on the subject of Crystal Park (point 1) and you also do not address point 5; the cost of altering the stadium may actually pay for multiple years of maintenance of an unaltered stadium.

JGG- Why are you digging up all the old arguments all of a sudden. They have been answered numerous times elsewhere.

The golden league is looking to expand and wont London to be part of the expanded league. This will but this is a once a year meeting. The demand for athletic meetings in this country is around the 25-30,000 mark as evidenced by the numerous athletics meetings attendance at CP. The IAAF would gladly have a full 25k London stadium for the golden league future meetings.

Crystal Palace is an increasingly dilapidated stadium that eventually be redeveloped from 2012 at the earliest (depending on funding & the PI into the park masterplan) which would see it downgraded with a new stand & sports centre built & the the opposing stand demolished. National athletics will move to Stratford.

Also the numerous Football & Rugby teams floated as potential tenants do not want a stadium with a running track (It might be fine in Europe but it is not the culture here) and as has been mentioned many times is a non starter. Why on earth would Chelsea fo example want to move from West London to Stratford.

As you should also realise Football has Wembley & Rugby Twickenham so why would they want to stage events in Stratford. Many stadiums in Europe with an Athletic stadium, whether retractable or not are usually municipal multi functional stadiums which is the cities main stadium.

Chelsea have trouble filling Stamford Bridge at time - they wouldn't pack out Wembley or anything close. Even if all your other arguments are correct (I don't have time to check right now) you're still left with a big national football stadium which doesn't get filled regularly enough to justify its cost.

I still think there's far too many problems with your proposal to make it workable. You'd be swapping one big empty stadium for another.

Chelsea have trouble filling Stamford Bridge at time - they wouldn't pack out Wembley or anything close.

Stamford Bridge is considered too small and that is why they are looking for a new stadium. Chelsea has no problem filling out Stamford Bridge :lol:; all they do is that they set the ticket prices high enough such that demand matches supply. Which also means that they go over the top a bit with prices and the team starts slacking, you see some odd empty seats. Old Trafford (Manchester United) has an 80,000 capacity and is being increased to 90,000. They are run for profit so there must be a rationale for this.

JGG- Why are you digging up all the old arguments all of a sudden. They have been answered numerous times elsewhere.

The reason I bring up these arguments again is that I am not very convinced about the strategy. Admittedly the starting point was bad. With the advantage of hindsight, they should never have constructed a new Wembley but they should have constructed the new national stadium, with running track, in Stratford and they should have knocked down Crystal Palace (which is a national disgrace). The reason I am reviving this discussion is that I have been waiting for some convincing arguments, but I have still not received any.

The golden league is looking to expand and wont London to be part of the expanded league. This will but this is a once a year meeting. The demand for athletic meetings in this country is around the 25-30,000 mark as evidenced by the numerous athletics meetings attendance at CP. The IAAF would gladly have a full 25k London stadium for the golden league future meetings.

You know as well as I do that this is a not very genuine argument. Of course there have never been more than 25,000 spectators for an athletics events in CP because that is the maximum capacity of the stadium!

Now if we take a step back, wasn't one of the main purposes of the olympics to increase sport participation in this country, and in particular to leave an athletics legacy?

So if France can fill up its SdF for international and domestic athletics event a few times a year, why could the UK not? The "stadium cost" per event day of the Olympics comes down to about £40 mio (construction cost divided by number of days during the Olympics. Now let's say that it costs £10 mio to maintain the stadium every year. If you can organise to major athlatics events every year (although one could probably do more) that fill up the stadium and draw the television audience, you cost is down to £5 mio per event day.

OK, I know this is a very rudimentary financial approach to the issue, but it would actually be great to see a proper financila analysis of the issue. I still haven't seen one. For instance, it is still not clear how much the legacy conversion would cost and how many years of maintenance that would pay for.

Crystal Palace is an increasingly dilapidated stadium that eventually be redeveloped from 2012 at the earliest (depending on funding & the PI into the park masterplan) which would see it downgraded with a new stand & sports centre built & the the opposing stand demolished. National athletics will move to Stratford.

But why do they not think out of the box and sell the whole thing to a soccer club with the obligation to keep a local sports centre for the kids? That would bring in the money to pay for ongoing promotion of athletics in this country. I really do not see the point of us tax payers having to pay for two sub-size athletic stadiums which are even on the same tube line (once the ELL reopens)!!!

Also the numerous Football & Rugby teams floated as potential tenants do not want a stadium with a running track (It might be fine in Europe but it is not the culture here) and as has been mentioned many times is a non starter. Why on earth would Chelsea fo example want to move from West London to Stratford.

My first point was that a share of Wembley should be sold to a London soccer club. I am sure they would have no issue with this; immediately they would have a stadium as large as Man United's. It would give a boost to the local regeneration as well. That allows all other non-sport events to move to Stratford and provides the Olympic Stadium witt more than enough events to cover its running costs.

My second point is that someone in London should have gone and visited the Stade of France. That stadium achieves both targets.... the track becomes very narrow as they pull out the seats when there is a soccer or rugby game. It is too late now to change the design of our Olympic stadium, but I think this has been a huge strategic mistake. If that additional money had been sepnt, they would have been able to pull in a football club.

If that additional money had been sepnt, they would have been able to pull in a football club.

They didn't want to pull in a football club. That was part of the point why London built an entire new purely for athletics-only stadium for the Olympics in the first place.

Wembley is the National football stadium. Its is neither wanted or desirable for any club to be based there. The FA own the stadium (contrary to what you might think) & are paying of the debt. Just as Twickenham is owned by the RFU & they & the clubs do not want a domestic tenant for the stadium. Other sports such as rugby league which also have a shared history at Wembley would not just simply up sticks & move to Stratford.

CP athletics has never sold out so that proves that the 25k post 2012 stadium is at the desired capacity. Why keep a stadium at 50k just on the off chance that it may sell out for an annual competition such as the golden league that it will get with a 25k stadium anyway? Paris may well sell out for athletics but the other golden league cities in Oslo & Zurich amongst others have capacities from 30-50k. They are also cities with very little other sporting events neither having a major football team or rugby team. Both Wembley & Twickenham (owned by their respective national associations who are servicing the debts on the stadiums) will never have a local anchor tenant as it is not desired by the respective associations or teams in the national leagues. European municipal stadiums may have the local club as an anchor tenant but this has never happened in the UK & might I remind you Juventus are moving from the old Stadio delle Alpi to their own purpose built football stadium without a running track which they thought ruined the atmosphere & was to big.

CP Athletic Stadium is in CP park & there has never been a desire to have football club here. It would not be allowed anyway as the recent PI call in proves (part of the CP redeployment masterplan involved building flats on a private Caravan park which is designated Metropolitan open land). It will still be a regional Athletics stadium with facilities for those south of the river & in southern England just as it is now.

You have been in London long enough to understand the sporting culture of the UK to understand why your questions seem to be dragging up are just the old arguments for the sake of it .Are you trying to make some sort of political points our of it?

If any such event required a larger capcity, couldn't temporary scafold stands be built cheaply and quickly at the edges of the bowl anyway?

Stamford Bridge is considered too small and that is why they are looking for a new stadium. Chelsea has no problem filling out Stamford Bridge :lol:; all they do is that they set the ticket prices high enough such that demand matches supply. Which also means that they go over the top a bit with prices and the team starts slacking, you see some odd empty seats. Old Trafford (Manchester United) has an 80,000 capacity and is being increased to 90,000. They are run for profit so there must be a rationale for this.

I think you will find that Chelsea does not sell out & the client & fan base would not up sticks from west London to Stratford.

London 2012, Legacy And The Economy
(http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=74672)24 February 2009
Article by Jennifer Clements

The effects of the economic recession on the plans for London 2012 have now been widely reported. We know that Lend Lease, the builder of the £1 billion Olympic Village has struggled to raise the private sector funding it needs. A restructured funding deal is currently being brokered by the ODA and Lend Lease whilst the ODA has been forced to fund the initial construction work which is now underway. The number of flats in the Olympic Village has been cut from 4,600 to 2,800 with the proposed high rise blocks scrapped in favour of low rise buildings. There are also rumours of configuration changes in the layout of the flats in order to squeeze in more athletes per flat which puts into question the legacy value of such properties.

Then there is talk of the International Broadcast Centre and Press Centre funding having been hit, with the result that the facilities may have to be split between two separate sites in Hackney and Stratford, with one site possibly being temporary. We also know that a certain amount of economising has gone on regarding the venues for certain sports such as basketball, shooting and equestrian events. That said, despite such doom and gloom, are all such cut backs necessarily going to be a negative thing for London 2012, or will it mean, hopefully, that London as a city will only be left with the infrastructure it actually needs, leaving behind less white elephants and a more tailored legacy?

£9.3 billion is the widely reported revised figure of the budget to host the London 2012 Games. This is a long way from the £3.4 billion which was announced when London made its bid in Singapore in 2005. However, this is a common theme with Olympic host cities and has happened time and time again. Look no further than Athens 2004, the cost of which spiralled to a then unprecedented £9.4 billion. Sydney 2000, despite being hailed as an Olympic success story, also managed to triple its original budget to Aus $6 billion and was left until 2005 with the white elephant that was its Olympic Park, with no long term plans for its use. The Sydney Games organising committee has admitted since that while legacy was a clearly recognised concept for those Games, it was not the primary focus. Athens fares even worse with a reported 21 out of the 22 venues created for the Games now lying abandoned whilst Athenian tax payers are still forking out for this unused infrastructure.

London won its bid largely because of the emphasis placed on regenerating the Lower Lea Valley area of East London, an area of historic industrial decline and one which has been labelled the 'tear in London's urban fabric'. We are told that legacy is at the very forefront of the London 2012 agenda and the eyes of the World and in particular now Britain's taxpayers, will be looking to see just how that £9.3 billion is spent and what long term, usable infrastructure and soft legacy is left behind for London.

It all looks and sounds promising. £5 billion is being invested in transportation for the Games involving the regeneration of 3 gateway railway stations, including the rebuilding of Stratford station to 3 times its original capacity, signal upgrades, enhanced, more accessible stations, major long term investment in the Tube, the DLR and North London line and a new Transport Information and Co-ordination centre providing a 'transport hub' to name but a few. The London 2012 hard legacy will, it is hoped, include a 102 hectare park with multiple new bridges and walkways over and around the River Lea providing better access to the area, 4,000 new homes of mixed tenure in the Olympic Village, together with a health centre and school and 5 new sporting venues including the Olympic stadium, the aquatic centre, the velodrome and an indoor multi-sports arena. The plans for the new Stratford City include 120 acres of space for leisure, offices, homes and hotels, plus the largest shopping complex in London to be built by the developers Westfield.

One way in which London is reducing the risk of the Lea Valley area being blighted with white elephants is by ensuring that the design of the largest sports venues such as the Olympic stadium and the aquatics centre enables them to be partially dismantled thereby reducing capacity after the Games. It is hoped for example that by reducing capacity at the new Olympic Stadium from 80,000 to 25,000 in 2013 will mean that the host boroughs will not be lumbered with an aging, oversized structure which costs a fortune to maintain - a situation which has afflicted so many former Olympic host cities. Similarly, the multi-sports arena, which will be used mostly for handball and goalball during the Games will be put to use housing a variety of different mainstream sports and other community uses after the Games.

Other tactics include choosing to demolish those facilities which post Games are less likely to be used rather than keeping them up. Rather than paying to maintain facilities like the equestrian venue indefinitely, the ODA has chosen to utilise some of East London's existing open spaces and venues such as Greenwich Park and the Excel Arena as temporary venues.

To go back to the economic downturn, cut backs at the Olympic venues need not necessarily be viewed as a bad thing. By being forced to take some of the measures described, London can hopefully reduce the construction of unnecessary facilities which cost a lot to run in the long term. The key it seems, is to economise as far as possible on those things which will only feature for the two weeks of the Games, and invest wisely in facilities which will provide legacy value. Key issues will include not making economising decisions at the expense of legacy and regeneration and learning from the legacy mistakes of previous Olympic hosts.

Whilst most people would agree that £9.3 billion is a phenomenal amount of money to simply host London 2012, it will not be considered so if London inherits a regenerated Lea Valley in its East End, and the recent tightening of the Olympic purse strings may actually help this happen. So far, the official noises are all positive for legacy and regeneration of the area. However, for the London Development Agency and the ODA, actions speak louder than words and we sit in hope that these things are delivered for London and that it is the most regeneration focused Olympic Games yet.

can we not stop talking about ruddy football in the middle of the 2012 Olympic threads...there are other sports apart from just football and this forum is about architecture and planning and its over impact NOT which crappy football team filled to the brim with over paid jocks should get the stadium after wards

I know go and talk about it somewhere else where they want to talk about football, this is not a thread about the legacy of one sport it's about something far more worthwhile and important.

I've always wondered why SSC city never allows for diversions and tangents within threads, surely that's the point of a discussion?

I think the problem is more that that particular topic (a football team making a home in the Olympic Stadium) is something which seems to crop up every other week and is discussed in 3 different threads (this one, the general London 2012 one, the Olympic stadium Construction thread).

There are those that think it should and those that think it shouldn't happen.

However, there's really nothing left to discuss on the topic though.

You're probably right to be fair, it's not happening. But this forum does seem to clamp down on tangental posts more than any other I post on; it was a more general point, not just about the 2012 threads.

God yeah. Why does London need another 50m pool & cycle track when we have already got a 40 year old one at Crystal Palace and the original velodrome from the last last Olympics at Herne Hill. Just demolish the lot of em.

You should know that the provision of olympic-sized pools is woefully inadequate in the capital and the nation . The australians , who seem to have one each, are astonished that we have so few .

Given the sheer size of London I see nothing wrong with it all .

I think london lad was being sarcastic.

I think london lad was being sarcastic.

No deadly serious ;)

A "legacy mode" I made from my old sketchup version of the stadium.
It's based on what that first promo video showed when the design was first shown.

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x11/MartinLeRoy/LondonMajor-1.jpg

A "legacy mode" I made from my old sketchup version of the stadium.
It's based on what that first promo video showed when the design was first shown.

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x11/MartinLeRoy/LondonMajor-1.jpg

please add to google warehouse :)

Olympic wasteland warning
(http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3139718&channel=783&c=1&encCode=0000000001969c10)1 May, 2009
By Ruth Bloomfield

The design review panel tasked with overseeing the London 2012 Olympics has warned that the Olympic Park could become a “wasteland” unless urgent action is taken to work up plans for the sites earmarked for temporary buildings.

Paul Finch, chairman of Cabe’s London 2012 panel, said he feared landmark Olympic buildings could be left isolated like the Millennium Dome if better legacy plans were not put in place.

Finch was speaking after his panel — which is due to be wound up this summer — issued a scathing verdict on the Olympic media centre, describing the RPS Group-designed International Broadcast Centre (IBC) as a work of “extraordinary banality”.

Finch said there was a danger that once the Olympics had finished and the temporary buildings had been removed, there would be “huge gaping holes” in the park.

“The big concern is that it will be a bit like the Millennium Dome, surrounded by huge areas of wasteland with literally nothing there,” he said.

“This is something that is being worked on now, but if you look at the Olympic site and consider what the map will look like a couple of months after the games once all the temporary facilities have been taken out, there are going to be an awful lot of great big gaps in the site… this is really the big challenge now.”

The London 2012 panel’s verdict on the media centre — the last major venue to be reviewed —described the IBC as a potential blight on Olympic legacy.

It said that more work was also needed to improve the “large monolithic block” of the other main media centre building, the Allies & Morrison-designed Main Press Centre.

Speaking about the IBC, the panel said: “In our view it is simply not good enough. “We would go so far as to say that its continued presence would blight, rather than enhance, the Olympic legacy.”

However, the ODA said the building was supposed to be functional and practical, and that over the last six months its cost — funded from the public purse — had been reduced to £355 million.

American regeneration expert is named to build Olympics legacy
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23700330-details/American+regeneration+expert+is+named+to+build+Olympics+legacy/article.do)Matthew Beard
27.05.09

The deputy mayor of Philadelphia was today named as the £200,000-a-year chief of the company chosen to deliver a legacy for the Olympic Park.

Urban development expert Andrew Altman will be responsible for attracting private investment in the 600-hectare park near Stratford to ensure it does not become a burden to the taxpayer after the 2012 Games.

As head of the “2012 legacy delivery company” established by London Mayor Boris Johnson, Mr Altman must find long-term tenants for the sports venues and developers to deliver thousand houses at the site.

He was recommended by Richard Rogers, the Mayor's architecture adviser. His appointment comes five months after he was named as a deputy mayor for planning and economic development in his home town of Philadelphia.

Mr Altman led the private sector regeneration of a swathe of waterfront in Washington DC, similar to the Olympic Park in that it had been dominated by industrial sites and had a history of deprivation.

His CV also includes public sector experience with senior planning roles in Washington, Los Angeles and Oakland.

Mr Johnson said: “Transforming this area into a thriving new district of London is one of the biggest regeneration projects in Europe. Andrew Altman is a big-hitter with his impressive record in leading and delivering huge development and regeneration projects in some of the largest cities of the US.”

Is there ANYTHING British about London 2012 other than taxpayer's money ?

Your Mum

:lol:

Is there ANYTHING British about London 2012 other than taxpayer's money ?

Well you've certainly provided the custom Great British moan to the whole thing. It's good to know then that the British always pull through in the end and will provide something unique and special so that everyone will have a spine-tingling moment come games-time.

Your Mum


:lol::cheers:

So that's a no then.

So that's a no then.

Yep, there are absolutely no British companies or people working on the Olympics.

Well if anyone expects mature trees in a brand new park they're out of touch with reality itself.Having said that,the few examples I've seen in bringing in SEMI-mature trees have been successful.Notably in the middle east and shopping malls.

I'm sure the park will look just fine and anyone with any common sense knows there's no such thing as instant mature landscaping.We know how to do parks.

Hmmm....wonder how much a giant artificial London Plane would cost. :-)

Olympic site links to national waterways with new East London lock
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/london_2012/article6432873.ece)Ashling O’Connor
From Times Online
June 5, 2009

For decades an intricate web of rivers and canals in East London has been populated by abandoned shopping trolleys, old tyres and a few stubborn anglers casting their lines between the industrial flotsam.

But a new era beckons for the Bow Back Rivers and tributaries of the River Lee as city planners try to entice visitors to a revitalised waterfront envisaged as the Amsterdam of the East End.

The ambitious vision takes a step towards reality with the opening of Three Mills Lock, the first lock to be built in London in 20 years. The £22 million project links a forgotten 3½-mile system of waterways around the Olympic Park in Stratford to the 2,200-mile national inland network that stretches from Bath to Ripon, North Yorkshire.

The opening of the “green gateway” means that barges, water taxis and pleasure cruisers could travel around the country before entering the Thames and mooring near the Olympic site.

RELATED LINKS
Canals to carry materials for Olympic site
Westfield has ongoing vision for Olympic site
Water will be one mode of transport for Olympic spectators in 2012. But the long-term aim of the project is to attract new inhabitants with a model of sustainable living made possible by holding back the tide to create a relatively constant water level.

Proposals include a “village of narrow boats” and a clutch of permanent moorings near the stadium.

Richard Rutter, the British Waterways regeneration manager, said: “Imagine the waterways of Holland and Belgium . . . We want to see riverside cafes, market boats, people hiring punts and materials being loaded from small wharves to be taken off for recycling. There is a massive demand in London for living on water and we need to meet it.”

Until then, it requires imagination to see past the graffiti, discarded beer cans and heavy brush on a stretch of brown water behind a Tesco carpark by the A12 in Bromley-by-Bow. Planners promise a transformation.

“We will have new towpaths and regrade the landscape so that it is less intimidating. People haven’t been able to get close to the water until now because industry has backed on to it,” Richard Jackson, the environment manager for the Olympic Delivery Authority, said.

Initial traffic through the new 62m (200ft) lock, with twin hydraulic water control gates and a fish pass, will be 350-tonne barges carrying construction materials in and waste out of the Olympic park.

Extensive dredging — removing 30,000 tonnes of silt, gravel and rubble — created a 2.4m-deep channel capable of transporting 12,000 tonnes of cargo a week. Olympic chiefs say that this equates to taking 1,200 lorry journeys off local roads each week, saving up to 4,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: “By shifting noisy, dusty and heavily polluting freight vehicles from busy roads on to water, we can free up traffic and drastically improve the quality of our environment.”

The Bow Back Rivers, covering an area the size of the City, are one of nine national restoration priorities for British Waterways.

Major navigation works between 1931 and 1935 led to peak freight traffic of two million tonnes a year, but bombing during the Second World War devastated the East End and the rise of rail and road curtailed investment in the waterways, which fell into disrepair.

After 2012, it is predicted that use of the waterways could reduce local carbon emissions by 440 tonnes a year and generate 160,000 KWh of hydro power through a restored tidal mill capable of powering up to 40 homes or lighting the local towpaths.

[QUOTE=DarJoLe;37771100]Olympic site links to national waterways with new East London lock
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/london_2012/article6432873.ece)Ashling O’Connor
From Times Online
June 5, 2009

For decades an intricate web of rivers and canals in East London has been populated by abandoned shopping trolleys, old tyres and a few stubborn anglers casting their lines between the industrial flotsam.

But a new era beckons for the Bow Back Rivers and tributaries of the River Lee as city planners try to entice visitors to a revitalised waterfront envisaged as the Amsterdam of the East End.

The ambitious vision takes a step towards reality with the opening of Three Mills Lock, the first lock to be built in London in 20 years. The £22 million project links a forgotten 3½-mile system of waterways around the Olympic Park in Stratford to the 2,200-mile national inland network that stretches from Bath to Ripon, North Yorkshire.

The opening of the “green gateway” means that barges, water taxis and pleasure cruisers could travel around the country before entering the Thames and mooring near the Olympic site.

RELATED LINKS
Canals to carry materials for Olympic site
Westfield has ongoing vision for Olympic site
Water will be one mode of transport for Olympic spectators in 2012. But the long-term aim of the project is to attract new inhabitants with a model of sustainable living made possible by holding back the tide to create a relatively constant water level.

Proposals include a “village of narrow boats” and a clutch of permanent moorings near the stadium.

Richard Rutter, the British Waterways regeneration manager, said: “Imagine the waterways of Holland and Belgium . . . We want to see riverside cafes, market boats, people hiring punts and materials being loaded from small wharves to be taken off for recycling. There is a massive demand in London for living on water and we need to meet it.”

Until then, it requires imagination to see past the graffiti, discarded beer cans and heavy brush on a stretch of brown water behind a Tesco carpark by the A12 in Bromley-by-Bow. Planners promise a transformation.

“We will have new towpaths and regrade the landscape so that it is less intimidating. People haven’t been able to get close to the water until now because industry has backed on to it,” Richard Jackson, the environment manager for the Olympic Delivery Authority, said.



I live in a town that already has this and it's great.We don't need to look to Europe for this as we've always had it. Excellent idea for London although doesn't ' Little Venice' already have narrowboats ? Never call them Houseboats by the way.The owners are offended by that.

The Punts are a great idea too but then I come from Cambridge ;-)

Press Release

Mayor of London Boris

2012 legacy rising steadily from the ground as new homes for Londoners take shape
8-6-2009 292

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson revealed today that London’s 2012 legacy plans are firmly on track, with construction of the Olympic Village well advanced since the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) began building work a year ago. The Village, which lies adjacent to the Olympic Park site in the heart of east London, will provide first-class accommodation for athletes during the 2012 Games, before being transformed into thousands of new homes for Londoners.

Another major landmark has been reached with the start of work on the Chobham Academy - a world-class education campus to be built within the Olympic Village. With spaces for 1,800 students aged three - 19, the Academy will ensure that the local community and future residents not only live in a brand new, thriving district, but have access to world-class education facilities for a range of needs, including nursery, primary and secondary schools within the development.

In Walthamstow tonight, at a special Olympics-themed debate organised by the Mayor, Londoners will discover how the London Games are already delivering many other lasting benefits to the capital. With the help of over 1,000 workers currently on the Olympic Village site, seven of the 11 residential blocks that will make up the Village are starting to take shape and make their mark on the east London skyline. Work is also complete on key parts of the new infrastructure to create transport links between the Village and the surrounding communities. This includes the lifting into place of two major railway bridges and new railway sidings to allow delivery of construction materials by rail to minimise congestion and pollution in east London.

In addition to the 11,000 workers, including many local people, who are expected to be employed on the Olympic Park and Olympic Village sites at the peak of construction, 20,000 training opportunities will be provided over the next five years in a range of construction related skills. These opportunities will allow Londoners to develop the right skills to continue to help deliver the venues and infrastructure for the London 2012 Games and other large-scale projects taking place across the region, such as Stratford City and Crossrail.

People attending the debate will also be able to have their say on all aspects of the 2012 legacy planned for east London.

The Mayor said:

“This is a very welcome landmark and marks major progress in the lasting regeneration of the East End. We now have a very clear vision and direction for our legacy, which is being expertly managed through the 2012 legacy delivery company. The ODA is making terrific progress and our vision of a vibrant, thriving district of new communities surrounded by beautiful parklands and reclaimed waterways with outstanding sporting, educational and cultural facilities, is taking shape. The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will deliver much more than just six weeks of sport and it is clear from progress to date that the future for this previously deprived area is spectacularly bright.”

Sebastian Coe, Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, said: “Our vision for London 2012 is to use the power of the Games to inspire lasting change – and leaving a legacy for generations of Londoners is a key part of our promise. With the Olympic Park now already starting to shape the East London skyline, everyone involved in this project is working towards delivering a positive sporting, social, economic and environmental legacy for our capital city. The employment, skills, training and business opportunities we have already created, along with the new homes and sporting facilities we are building, are ensuring we are delivering the 2012 legacy right now. I’m proud that sport has been the catalyst for this transformation.”

Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) Chairman John Armitt said: “The Olympic Village will be one of the strongest legacies from the Games, delivering world-class accommodation for athletes in 2012 and creating essential new housing for new and existing communities for generations to come. Along with the thousands of new homes that are rapidly taking shape, the Village will also deliver a range of community facilities and the start of work on a world-class new education campus within the Village is another significant milestone.”

Olympic bosses to rethink 10,000-home legacy plan
(http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=3142505&c=1)12 June 2009
By Joey Gardiner

Plans for Olympic park after 2012, including conversion of stadium into school, may be altered

Olympic bosses have decided to rework the development plan for the Olympic site after 2012, four months after it was launched by London mayor Boris Johnson and Olympics minister Tessa Jowell.

This will include looking again at the legacy use of the Olympic stadium, which was to be used as an athletics stadium and sports-themed school.

A well-placed source close to the 2012 legacy delivery company understands that Baroness Ford, the recently appointed chair of the organisation, wants to have a “second look” at the masterplan that was launched in February.

This laid out plans for 10,000 homes, commercial developments that will create 10,000 jobs, and using the stadium as a school.

The review follows the departure of Tom Russell, head of the London Development Agency’s (LDA) Olympic Legacy Directorate, last month. Russell was in charge of drawing up the masterplan, as well as instigating the process that led to the formation of the Olympic legacy company.

Russell appointed a consortium of architects made up of EDAW, Allies and Morrison and KCAP to develop the masterplan.

“If they want to look at it again, then I welcome it and I’m not surprised”
Conor McAuley, Newham council
Ford was appointed to chair the as yet unnamed company in April. Last month Andrew Altman, the deputy mayor of Philadelphia, was named chief executive of the body, which will begin work later in the summer.

The review will come despite the fact that a planning application for the legacy is due to be submitted in the summer.

The source said: “There’s been good feedback on the masterplan, but we want it to be more ambitious, crisper – and it’s important that the new chief executive has some input.

“This will include looking at how we might use the stadium, which has to be worthy of a second look. The view is we’re not doing anything like enough with the sporting legacy.”

Separate sources said the original framework was viewed as “pedestrian” by the local boroughs. Conor McAuley, head of regeneration at Newham council, said: “If they want to look at it again, then I welcome it and I’m not surprised.”

A spokesperson for the LDA said following the February consultation that there would “inevitably be some further alterations” to the masterplan.

THE BEST LAID PLANS
Building revealed in February that the Olympic stadium was to be turned into a new type of sports-themed school following the London Olympics.
After agonising for two years over whether to sell the venue to a football club, the Olympic Delivery Authority finally decided that the cost of removing the running track was too much.

Instead, the stadium was to be reduced from 80,000 seats to 25,000 and used as an occasional athletics venue. Other parts of it were to be redeveloped into a “studio school” for children with special needs, using the Olympic heritage to inspire children who were struggling in the state sector.

I guess the legacy will also include some of the new or refurbished training venues that will be dotting up around the country.

In my little town just over an hour from London, we're getting a fantastic 50m Pool on the back of the games. We were getting a new pool anyway but it was extended in the hope that it will be chosen as a training base for one of the visiting nations in 2012. Don't see why it shouldn't as it looks fantastic and it doesn't open until next month...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northamptonshire/content/articles/2009/06/10/olympic_dream_fills_up_feature.shtml

http://www.corbypool.co.uk/timeline_pics/IMG_3025%20(Medium).jpg

http://www.corbypool.co.uk/timeline_pics/IMG_3026%20(Medium).jpg

http://www.corbypool.co.uk/timeline_pics/IMG_2959%20(Medium).jpg

‘New vision’ needed for the Olympic legacy, says Rogers
(http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/-new-vision-needed-for-the-olympic-legacy-says-rogers/5203667.article)18 June, 2009 | By Kieran Long

Richard Rogers has warned that the Olympic legacy could be wasted if a new vision for the site and the surrounding Lower Lea Valley in London does not emerge soon

Speaking at a meeting of crossbench peers at the House of Lords this week, Rogers said: ‘I’m concerned about the overall strategy [to the Olympic legacy]. In the Thames Gateway we have seen the opportunity lost because of an appalling standard of buildings. We need a vision [for the Lea Valley], because this will be here for hundreds of years.’

Baroness Ford, appointed in April as chair of the 2012 legacy delivery company, admitted that her powers beyond the Olympic park were limited. ‘There’s a red line around the park, but I’ve never been one to observe red lines,’ she said. She also suggested that a new version of the legacy masterplan would be drawn up, and that the current version, by EDAW, Allies and Morrison and KCAP, ‘was by no means the finished article.’ She added that if the process took an extra six months, it would be worth it.

The meeting brought together a high-level group to discuss concerns that the legacy lacked strategic thinking. The launch of an All Party Parliamentary Group of Urban Regeneration, Sport and Culture was announced, which will look at the legacy of events such as the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and the European Cultural Capital.

London 2012: designing for legacy
(http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/london-2012-designing-for-legacy/5206721.article)13 August, 2009 | By Andrea Klettner

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/pictures/576x432fitpad[0]/0/9/8/1209098_PARK_legacy.jpg
Olympic Park in legacy mode

AJ SPECIAL REPORT: How plans for the Olympic Park are shaping up under legacy chief Baroness Margaret Ford

When London won the 2012 Olympic Games in 2005, its success was based on the promise of a legacy – a new East London providing future-proof housing design, thousands of jobs, improved transport links and new communities.

As former London mayor Ken Livingstone puts it: ‘I only bid because of the regeneration potential, otherwise we could never have justified it. I would like to see allotments set among sports pitches and an area that allows people to walk from Enfield right down to the Thames.’

But with three years until the big event, questions remain about what exactly will happen to the Olympic Park once the Games are over. Just a few weeks into the job and newly appointed legacy chief Baroness Margaret Ford has already torn into the existing post-Games plans to scale down Populous’ 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium into a smaller, 25,000-capacity version. Ford would prefer to keep the arena at its full size, although it is doubtful she will be allowed to force this through without consensus from her board, due to be appointed in September.

While more certain plans exist for the other Olympic venues (see map), there are still large chunks of land in the park masterplan – some designated for temporary infrastructure and venues during the Games – that remain blank in legacy mode. According to one source close to the project, ‘there is a map doing the rounds with big white areas on it that no one knows what to do with yet’.

Ford, who heads up the Olympic Park Legacy Company, admits there is still a lot of work to be done on the park’s legacy masterplan, due to be submitted for planning in early 2010. ‘A lot of excellent work has been done in planning the legacy up to this point,’ says Ford. ‘But there should be a greater emphasis on celebrating the sporting legacy we will inherit from the 2012 Games.

‘Just as South Kensington is a destination for museums, the Olympic Park should be a visitor destination for a unique sporting experience – whether you play sport or not,’ adds Ford.

What has been decided is that the park will be divided into five main quarters, each with its own residential areas and community facilities including marinas, schools, nurseries and parklands. According to Markus Appenzeller, design co-ordinator for the Olympic Legacy Masterplan Framework and a director at KCAP Architects, ‘each housing area will have a certain focus, like the family-orientated area in the north’. Ford places emphasis on the parkland aspect of the site: ‘The Olympic site will be defined in legacy by the use of its parkland. We will inherit one of Europe’s largest urban parks and I want it to be beloved by Londoners in the same way Central Park is in New York.’

MJ Long, chair of CABE’s masterplan design review panel, doesn’t think the lack of clarity regarding the legacy plan is something to worry about. ‘Plans might seem a bit vague right now, but no one is hiding anything or being cagey. It’s really just all happening as we speak,’ explains Long. ‘That’s not to say there aren’t unresolved questions,’ she continues. ‘For example, during the Games there will be extra toilets and hamburger stands and we need to decide what to do with these. All options are being looked at – they might be recycled, whole buildings might be moved to somewhere else, or their long-term use might simply change on site.’

Ford agrees: ‘The development of the Olympic Park site will take place over a period of 25 years and beyond. We will be working with the Olympic Delivery Authority [ODA] and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to ensure we can begin work on site as soon as possible after the 2012 Paralympics has finished.’

One option is using spaces that will not be immediately developed to house cultural events, giving the public access to parts of the site that would otherwise be closed. ‘It could be similar to the Potsdamer Platz programme in Berlin, where there was a big exhibition hall to show people what it would look like,’ says Appenzeller. ‘The area was also opened up in the summer and cultural events were held there for the public.’

The shape of the masterplan is not the only aspect of the legacy plan still undecided. What is also unclear is how planning and design vetting for the park will work. The area currently falls under the jurisdiction of the ODA, but it is hoped that planning conditions for the park in legacy mode, which straddles four London boroughs, will be decided by a joint planning committee. Newham Council’s divisional director for the 2012 Games, Nick Williams, says: ‘Anything we do will be coloured by what the aspirations for the park are, and in legacy the obvious place for these decisions to be made is with a central committee made up of representatives from all the boroughs.’

As for design delivery, Appenzeller says: ‘You can have the nicest plan, but if the delivery mechanism isn’t properly in place then you won’t get the quality you set out for.’ The responsibility of ensuring appropriate designs are picked for permanent structures will fall to the legacy company – but how this will be done remains uncertain. ‘The Olympic Park Legacy Company has to define its own agenda. Within it there has to be some sort of design supervision or design control,’ says Appenzeller. ‘This could come in the form of a CABE-type review, or a separate department within the company that focuses on design. It’s all very much in discussion.’

The future of most larger venues, whose delivery is the responsibility of the ODA, is more clear-cut. Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre will be slightly downsized, while the VeloPark – comprising the Hopkins-designed, 6,000-seat Velodrome, road circuit and BMX track – will remain very close to its Games-mode design.

The Media Centre, designed by Allies and Morrison with RPS, will be eventually transformed into a commercial structure. CABE has had its issues with early designs for the Media Centre, effectively a giant warehouse, and exactly how the building will be successfully split remains to be decided. But it has been agreed that the ‘modular’ design will be chopped up and replaced in phases by ‘permanent structures for different uses’.

For now, much of the detail regarding the legacy plan is a work in progress. To fulfil their brief, the Olympic Park Legacy Company will need to form a robust long-term strategy – one that allows for change and evolution, but keeps to its original agenda.

Legacy plans for the permanent Olympic venues

Olympic Park legacy map

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/Journals/1/Files/2009/8/13/OlympicMap.jpg

1. Olympic Stadium

Architect Populous
Games mode Host venue with 80,000-seats for opening/closing ceremonies and track and field events
Legacy May become a smaller 25,000-seat venue, or remain at full size
Issues Baroness Ford has questioned the reasoning behind building a half-temporary stadium, especially since the UK is hosting the 2015 rugby World Cup and bidding for the 2018 football World Cup
Certainty of plans 20%


2. Aquatics Centre

Architect Zaha Hadid
Games mode 17,500-capacity venue hosting swimming and diving events
Legacy Wings will be removed to reduce capacity to 2,500
Issues Spiralling costs, up to £300 million from £75 million, were brought under control by simplifying the design. A £40 million, post-Games, add-on leisure centre and public wave pool was ditched last November
Certainty of plans 90%

3. Media Centre

Architect Allies and Morrison
Games time Host venue for 20,000-strong international press and broadcast media
Legacy Designed to be converted, in phases, into commercial spaces by being dismantled and rebuilt
Issues Essentially a gigantic metal warehouse. Innovative cladding and reworking of the facade has dispelled most fears that it will sit as an eyesore at the edge of the park. However, no tenants have been found post-2012
Certainty of plans 10%

4. VeloPark

Architect Hopkins
Games mode Host to all cycling events. Includes the 6,000-seat Velodrome
Legacy The Velodrome and road circuit will remain intact. BMX and mountain bike courses will be redesigned
Issues Costs escalated early on because the site was used as a landfill in Victorian times, resulting in a huge clean-up operation
Certainty of plans 95%

5. Eton Manor

Architect Stanton Williams
Games mode Training venues
Legacy Stanton Williams is responsible for turning these three areas into a 3,000-capacity hockey stadium, indoor and outdoor tennis courts and allotments
Issues The last major venues to be designed in the park, but also the least challenging
Certainty of plans 99%

6. Handball Arena

Architect Make
Games mode 7,000-capacity venue hosting preliminary handball and Paralympic goalball
Legacy The first venue to be opened in legacy mode, the arena will be used as a multi-sports venue and will host cultural, entertainment and business events
Issues Making the design as flexible as possible in legacy mode
Certainty of plans 99%

7. Olympic Village

Architects include Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, CF Møller, Denton Corker Marshall, dRMM, DSDHA, Glenn Howells Architects, Ian Simpson Architects, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Make, Niall McLaughlin Architects, Panter Hudspith Architects, Patel Taylor and Piercy Conner
Games mode Home to 17,000 Olympic athletes in 11 residential blocks
Legacy Will be converted into 2,818 apartments, with 1,379 taken on by Triathlon Homes as affordable housing. The rest will be sold to developers for private resale
Issues The Olympic Village is currently owned by the taxpayer, so a value-for-money sale to future developers is essential. The conversion to apartments will take three years to complete
Certainty of plans 50%

8. Basketball Arena

Architects Sinclair Knight Merz, Wilkinson Eyre and KSS Design Group
Games mode 12,000-seat venue for basketball events
Legacy The ODA plans to recycle the majority of the structure. Plans to reuse it as a market hall have been ditched
Issues Designed as a temporary venue, it is likely to be pulled down
Certainty of plans 50%

A-E. Other temporary venues and infrastructure

Although the builders’ merchant and training facilities (A) and the fuel farm and waste consolidation centre (E) will revert to parkland in legacy mode, the future of the concrete batching plants (B), the Olympic Park health centre (C) and the logistics and command offices (D) remains uncertain

A very good, balanced read.

Boris Johnson wants campus built in 2012 park
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23749943-boris-wants-campus-built-on-2012-park.do)Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent
29.09.09

Boris Johnson wants to create a university campus in the Olympic Park.

A £200,000 study has been launched to determine if there is enough student demand for the campus, which the Mayor wants to build south of the 2012 media centre. It is hoped the college will be open by 2014 and would link to the Olympic facilities and offer courses in sports science.

The research, to be carried out by consultancy firm PA Consulting, will also explore the business and student demand for new media and sports and green technology centres, according to the City Hall document approving the funding. The completed study will be submitted to the newly-formed Olympic Park Legacy Company.

City Hall is providing £25,000 towards the study with the remainder coming from the Government, the London Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Company reveals plans for Olympic Park after games
(http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iNhmTQUI9lJDE1njpZ9YSQcnRPfw)(UKPA) – 22 minutes ago

The time line to try to ensure the Olympic Park is a success after the London 2012 Games has been unveiled.

Andrew Altman, chief executive of the new Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), said: "There is a real focus, in these early years, to ensure there is as much activity and attraction to the park.

"We are starting now so that hopefully there will be a flawless move from the great build through to Games time and beyond."

The OPLC has broken down its approach to the challenges it faces in securing the viability of the site including the showpiece Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London.

From now to 2012, the focus will be planning and early promotion. Event testing ahead of the Games means the park will be open ahead of the Games in 2011.

Once the Games have ended, from 2012 to 2014, will be the reinstatement phase. This is where the temporary bits of the park which had been put in place to stage the Games will be removed.

The long-term transformation of the site at this stage will include the wings of the Aquatics centre being removed ready for what the park will become after the Games.

Then 2014 - 2019 is seen as "the first five years of development and the area being seen as the park," Mr Altman said. This is when it is hoped the housing and commercial opportunities plus the growth around the park will become clearer.

The plan is for the OPLC to work closely with the land owners, Lea Valley and the local boroughs so the Park "is not isolated and is well connected" with the previously-impoverished east London neighbourhood where it sits - to do anything else would be a mistake, according to Mr Altman.

Mr Altman said: "The hope is that the park will be seen as a destination and a great place to go, for people to visit, a chance for job opportunities and build on a sport heritage from having hosted the 2012 Games."

Ford reveals Olympic legacy board

Sir Robert Kerslake is one of 14 named on the board of the Olympic Park Legacy Company

The first board members of the Olympic Park Legacy Company have been announced by its chairman, Margaret Ford.

Fourteen individuals will make up the board, including Sir Robert Kerslake, chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency and Keith Edelman, former managing director of Arsenal Holdings who was involved in the Emirates Stadium project.

Other new board members include Ranjit Singh Baxi, Nick Bitel, Robert John, Arman Dalvi, David Edmonds, David Gregson, Philip Lewis, Lord Mawson, Elizabeth McMahon, Jules Pipe, Olympic gold medallist Tessa Sanderson and mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales.

The chief executive Andrew Altman, and the company’s director of finance and corporate services who has yet to be appointed will also be members of the board.

Representatives from the company’s three Founders, the Mayor of London, the Government Olympic Executive and the Department of Communities and Local Government, will be observers to the Board.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: "The strength and depth of this new Board brings an exceptionally rich mix of experience to the table. Their combined skills, ranging from property development and regeneration to international business and marketing, will ensure we deliver our vision of transforming east London into a fantastic new quarter of the capital and a must visit destination for visitors from around the world."

http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?...de=3153025&c=0
__________________

2012 Olympics site to be turned into biggest urban park for a century (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23799140-2012-olympics-site-to-be-turned-into-biggest-urban-park-in-century.do)
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent
26.01.10

Olympic chiefs today unveiled plans to transform the Games site into London's largest new urban park in more than a century.

A “hanging gardens”, a tree-lined avenue modelled on Birdcage Walk and a mile-long cycle track are expected to form the centrepiece of the £200 million environmental project.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/treewalk-415.jpg

The Olympic Delivery Authority proposes to create 250 acres of parklands at the Stratford site and will plant 4,000 semi-mature trees and 300,000 wetland plants in time for the opening of the Games in 2012.

After the Olympics, temporary wildflower meadows will be planted on plots awaiting development.

Temporary avenues of trees and hedges will also be planted along fences of future development areas to create a welcoming entrance to the Park, which is expected to begin re-opening to the public in the summer of 2013.

The planning application for the “greening” of the site, largely former industrial land in the Lower Lea Valley, was recently submitted by the ODA which will fund the works out of the taxpayer-funded £9.3 billion Olympic budget .

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/aquatics-415.jpg

The parklands will be fitted around the sports venues, housing and other commercial developments in the wider 420-acre Games site.

The “hanging gardens” will be created with plants, shrubs and meadows 30 feet above the ground on a £70 million pedestrian bridge linking Stratford town centre to the aquatics centre, which forms the main gateway to the Games.

A tree-lined park road into the north of the site has been modelled on The Mall and Birdcage Walk with lighting, surfacing and bollards.

A mile-long cycling circuit will wind round the velodrome and there will be four miles of mountain bike tracks.

A “London 2012” garden will stretch for half a mile between the aquatics centre and the Olympic stadium to celebrate British plants.

The southern part of the park will feature markets, events, cafés and bars.

The northern area will use environmental techniques to manage flood and rain water while providing quieter public space and habitats for hundreds of animals, including rare species, from kingfishers to otters.

ODA chief executive David Higgins said: “We are cleaning up industrial land and creating the green backdrop for the London 2012 Games that become the UK's largest new urban park in over a century.

"Inspired by the Victorian parks, the meadows, gardens, woods and river walks will create a fantastic space for people and wildlife at the heart of east London.”

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the Olympics organising committee Locog, said: “The further regeneration of east London continues apace.

“After the Games have gone, an incredible legacy will be left — not least a family-friendly park with state of the art sporting facilities transforming this area for London, creating and serving new communities for generations to come.”

Legacy plans for London's Olympic Park 'still unclear' from BBC

The Olympic Stadium will retain the track and field facility
Plans for the use of the Olympic Park venue after 2012 are "still unclear", a London Assembly report has said.

The "continuing uncertainty" could make the venue "an island of prosperity, cut off from the surrounding community".

see for full article>


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8517148.stm

[QUOTE=DarJoLe;46085245]Ford reveals Olympic legacy board

Sir Robert Kerslake is one of 14 named on the board of the Olympic Park Legacy Company

The first board members of the Olympic Park Legacy Company have been announced by its chairman, Margaret Ford.

Fourteen individuals will make up the board, including Sir Robert Kerslake, chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency and Keith Edelman, former managing director of Arsenal Holdings who was involved in the Emirates Stadium project.

...

QUOTE]

Mmh, Sir Bob K. of the HCA which just refused a Freedom Of Infomation Request exposing which of the developments bailed out by the HCA do not meet the minimum standards for new build / homes for the future promoted by this government, CABE, et al. Some of these developments scored as low as 1.5/20 or 2.0/20 !

I'm sure we'll be seeing some transparency here, what with all the public money being ploughed into it (I jest) :ohno:

Life on the Olympic Fringe (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23811499-life-on-the-olympic-fringe.do)
Kieran Long
03.03.10

The building of the Olympic Park at Stratford is a seismic shift for the built environment and the people of east London.

The frenzy of construction on the vast site is the main event, hurtling towards its unavoidable deadline in summer 2012.

But there are pressing and even trickier problems beyond it.

The areas that edge on to the Olympic Park, known as the Olympic Fringe, must hang on to their identities in the face of the massive influx of visitors and private money that the Games are expected to bring.

Part of the proposed answer to this is hoped for in six projects that will form a ring around the Olympic Park. Commissioned by national, regional and London-wide agencies, they are attempting to give the Olympic site a context, something to connect to.

But the masterplans are about more than enabling visitors to get to and from the 2012 Games easily. These projects also hope to help those areas retain their individual character while adjusting to their brash new neighbour.

The latest masterplan to be announced will centre on Hackney Wick and Fish Island, which forms most of the western edge of the Olympic site.

Muf Architecture/Art, a radical practice based in Clerkenwell, won the job with a proposal, now subject to further development, that will create new public spaces as well as temporary interventions that try to bring together the area's artistic, business and residential communities.

Their approach - bottom-up, analytical and poetic - is increasingly influential in London architecture and urban design, as award-winning projects in Barking town centre and Whitecross Street in Clerkenwell prove. Muf's mantra to "value what's there" is becoming accepted just when east London needs it most.

Hackney Wick and Fish Island are jammed between the noisy, elevated carriageways of the A12 and the serene River Lea Navigation canal.

Hackney Wick is the more residential northern half while Fish Island, to the south of the Hertford Union Canal, is dominated by industrial uses and some spectacular 19th-century warehouses.

Fish Island takes its name from the street names of the area: Dace Road, Roach Road etc, which were set out and named by the Gas, Light and Coke Company in the 1860s.

It's not really an island at all but feels very much like one, literally cut off from the rest of the city by canals, to the south by the elevated Northern Outfall Sewer and to the west by the A12.

Fish Island has a unique 19th-century scale and character, thanks to the rational, regular street plan, and the combination of high-rise warehouse buildings and open yards.

Right now it feels especially disconnected, with buses diverted because of the Olympic works, and Hackney Wick station closed until June because of engineering works.

Visitors to Hackney Wick and Fish Island today will see that the cranes just across the canal herald the massive change that is already coming to this placid neighbourhood.

At the end of Dace Road, one of London's best-preserved 19th-century streets, is picturesque Old Ford Lock (the lock-keeper's cottages there were once the home of C4's Big Breakfast). Beyond that and through the trees is the immense bowl of the 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium, nearing completion.

The change is already detectable in Hackney Wick too. If you stand on the westbound platform of the London Overground (final destination Richmond) you can see an old warehouse building that has been converted into handily located rooms for Olympic construction workers ("Fresh laundry and cleaning weekly"), and hi-visibility jackets stream over the bridges crossing the canal at the end of the day's work at the Olympic site.

Disused lock-ups advertise their proximity to the Olympic site with a hopeful desperation. But there's also a sense of calm around here.

The streets are quiet, and the handsome 19th-century warehouses on Fish Island, and scattered mature trees, give this place a dignified character.

It's not just the architecture that makes Hackney Wick feel like a special place. There is a thriving residential community. The area is also home to anarchist protest groups and guerrilla gardeners, travellers and skip-hire firms.

Research carried out by Muf last year uncovered the extent of the local artistic community (some of London's most important artists have studios in the area, including Michael Landy, Phyllida Barlow and Gary Webb) and there are more than 600 studios in Hackney Wick and Fish Island, twice as many as in artistic hot-spot Dalston.

Industries such as printing and food manufacturing are also hanging on in the area despite the disruption the Olympics has brought to transport connections.

If this story sounds familiar, you're not the only one to have noticed. The Shoreditch Trust says "Hackney Wick is what Shoreditch was 50 years ago".

The growing number of galleries, with the Elevator Gallery prominent among them, testifies to that attractive mix of culture and industry that has heralded regeneration and gentrification in other parts of London, and suggests that a 50-year timescale is too long - by a factor of 10.

Muf's approach is to make the most of the rich culture of these two side-by-side neighbourhoods, to harness the momentum of the Olympics to lasting effect for the area without sacrificing its existing activities.

"One of the most interesting things revealed in our mapping [last year] was that many of the legacy promises of the media centre, in terms of creative uses, are already here," says Muf partner Liza Fior. "The challenge is to intensify those assets and to find desirable uses that can be shared between visitors and existing residents."

The pragmatic stuff will get done. There is a need to upgrade existing streets and make the most of the new bridge links between Hackney Wick and the Olympic Park.

But Muf will also conduct a further, more extensive, survey of the area, establishing existing uses, ecology, street lighting and furniture, play spaces and opportunities for public art.

The architects hope that this will result in new links between communities. One early proposal is for a series of partnerships between artists and local businesses in the area called "Made in Hackney Wick", to encourage dialogue between art and business and establish tangible signs of the existing creative and economic activity in the area.

Temporary installations, manufactured and designed in Hackney Wick, will be key to this. "Temporary does not have to mean second best," says Fior. "Temporary is a means of introducing into inert development sites fragile and desirable uses like play, culture and the bucolic, that are normally the first to be cut when a project is built."

Two weeks ago, a report from the Greater London Authority highlighted the risk that the Olympic site could become "an island of prosperity" in east London, and that the legacy for the surrounding communities was unclear.

The six areas adjacent to the site - clockwise from the west - Hackney Wick and Fish Island, Hackney Marshes, Leyton, Stratford Town Centre, Stratford High Street and Sugarhouse Lane - are now being masterplanned by architects trying to cajole and crowbar the behemoth of the Olympics into something like a normal London context.

Eleanor Fawcett, of Design for London (the Mayor and GLA's urban design and architecture office), explains: "Many of the local town centres - Leyton, Roman Road, Homerton, Stratford - all operate with their backs to what is becoming the Olympic Park. The legacy of the park needs to have something to plug into."

The modest budgets of the Olympic Fringe projects (in the low single figures of millions of pounds) belie how hard they will have to work.

Look to the south-western edge of the site and the worst of all outcomes is visible, with the hideous blocks of housing lining Stratford High Street evidence of developers' desires to make a quick buck.

Even the London Development Agency - another of the Mayor's agencies - admits that there have been mistakes here, and these do not encourage optimism about other fringe sites.

But places such as Hackney Wick and Fish Island can be bulwarks against the generally antiseptic architectural character of the Olympic site and the bombastic cynicism of the housing developers' architecture because of the richness of the communities and uses they accommodate.

Muf's ideas can help local communities resist the housing blocks of Stratford, and embed the culture of the place in plans for the future.

When the Olympic Park is complete, Hackney Wick and Fish Island will have been transformed from a cut-off archipelago to a key link between two major public parks in east London - Victoria Park to the west and the Olympic Park to the east.

If Muf's projects can bind its residents together, Hackney Wick and Fish Island will become a busier, more beautiful and still vibrant place of cultural and material production.

If one legacy of the Olympics could be an understanding of what is worth preserving in places such as Fish Island, it would be a worthy one indeed.

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A couple of stories about the Park after 2012:

Leyton Orient move to Eton Manor is still a possibility it is claimed

Shaun Dawson, the chief executive of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, has told the London Assembly that there is still a possibility Leyton Orient could move to Eton Manor following the conclusion of the London 2012 Games.

Eton Manor, which is located in the North of the Olympic Park and set to stage wheelchair tennis during the Paralympics, will be operated by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority after London 2012 and Dawson says they have been approached by Orient about the possibility of moving into the area.

http://www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/summer-olympics/2012/14240-exclusive-leyton-orient-move-to-eton-manor-is-still-a-possibility-it-is-claimed

Sky and Westfield front-runners for velodrome naming rights

Westfield and Sky have emerged as the two front-runners for the naming rights of the London 2012 velodrome after the conclusion of the Games.

The naming rights for London 2012 venues are being put up for sale to ensure that the British public do not have to be charged premium prices to use the facilities after the Games.

Westfield, due to its proximity to the velodrome, and Sky, because of its close associations with cycling, are said to be the front-runners in a bidding battle that has attracted plenty of interest.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/8761818/London-2012-Olympics-Sky-and-Westfield-front-runners-for-velodrome-naming-rights.html

New North Park legacy visualisations -

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-xDmAo6jElAU/T0-nnww639I/AAAAAAAABv4/AkajnEDuGrs/s640/np5.JPG

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-cZC4mzuERQY/T0-oo-CbgaI/AAAAAAAABwA/031Hu1c_bio/s640/np4.JPG

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-FCXtW45XYOE/T0-pIwiEHXI/AAAAAAAABwI/WuAjifyU7Z8/s640/np3.JPG

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-7uYJD62viUE/T0-pnTNc6xI/AAAAAAAABwQ/i1t7ZOVeZ9g/s640/np2.JPG

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-bYu7yz1vmNE/T0-qQgistEI/AAAAAAAABwY/tKa2SkpZ01E/s640/np1.JPG

All these ideas are so beautiful. This one looks like a natural wetland. I like!

Stunning cycle route