London 2012 - Skybar and News

[JohnW]

Originally Posted by Madman

I was looking at a map of the Lee Valley and realised how close it is to West Ham. I have just been thinking why cant we make our Olympic stadium have retractable lower tiers like the Stade de France so West Ham can relocate there and enable the stadium to have a capacity of like 50k in legacy mode rather than 25k yet still host athletics events. In addition the site of the stadium is closer to West Ham (ok only by a little bit ) than Upton park is so it would be like a return home for West Ham United.

The above was posted in July 2005 at the start of this thread, before the Stadium has been designed. If only eh?

[Gavrosh]

well, it was sort-of obvious, wasnt it? In fact, the decision not to build that is a microcosm of everything thats wrong with left wing boneheadedness: Livingston was determined that a private football club wouldnt use it, so pushed for the 25k legacy, despite the fact that it was against the long term interests of taxpayers and it was a waste of a fantastic site.

[.Adam]

Erm...and it was also half of the reason we won the bid? to provide a true athletics legacy in London. The fact it's being sold off to a football club is a huge shame - the best outcome now could be mixed use.

Also wasn't it West Ham that were against the idea of retractable seating?

[Ebeneezer_Goode]

I'd say it the sporting legacy of the games was meant to be broader than just athletics.

[Gavrosh]

Originally Posted by .Adam

Erm...and it was also half of the reason we won the bid? to provide a true athletics legacy in London. The fact it's being sold off to a football club is a huge shame - the best outcome now could be mixed use.

Also wasn't it West Ham that were against the idea of retractable seating?

How is it a huge shame given that athletics will bet guaranteed long term use of a venue that has the capacity to hold future large scale events rather than another 20-30k venue that couldnt? How exactly is it a huge shame that a crucial area of East London will see more or less constant use rather than occasionally during summer months? Mixed use would not have been counter to the promises made to the Olympic Committee, and West ham's owners had suggested at the time that they would put £200 million into a multi-use stadium, but Livingston/ Jowell ploughed on with the concrete bowl solution regardless. Instead of it costing the taxpayer £500 million its now going to cost 50% more. Well done, Comrades.

[DarJoLe]

A dedicated athletics stadium proposal was needed to trump Paris's already built multi-purpose stadium.

[.Adam]

Originally Posted by Gavrosh

How is it a huge shame given that athletics will bet guaranteed long term use of a venue that has the capacity to hold future large scale events rather than another 20-30k venue that couldnt? How exactly is it a huge shame that a crucial area of East London will see more or less constant use rather than occasionally during summer months? Mixed use would not have been counter to the promises made to the Olympic Committee, and West ham's owners had suggested at the time that they would put £200 million into a multi-use stadium, but Livingston/ Jowell ploughed on with the concrete bowl solution regardless. Instead of it costing the taxpayer £500 million its now going to cost 50% more. Well done, Comrades.

Before we even start this.. Have you read the bid?

[dronkula]

Just out of interest, now that the 'final use' of the Olympic Stadium is (almost) sorted and contracts signed etc. is there a list of what's confirmed is happening to all the Olympic Venues - a sort of 'White Elephant Watch' to just see how they're doing in making sure there's nothing going to waste.

And, anyone got a comparison on how well we're doing in in less than 12 months in sorting out converting all the venues post game compared to Sydney, Athens and Beijing? I'm pretty sure we've done a lot better than Athens and Beijing - although no idea about how long it took Sydney to sort out their venues post games (I think they've all been put into use though haven't they?)

[progressing nicely]

Not many permanent venues were built for the Olympics but I think the only one that looked like it may be a white elephant was the Main Stadium

The Stadium - Potentially West Ham's new home
Aquatics Centre - Being converted into a public pool that should open next year
Velodrome - Velopark opens early next year
Copper Box - A multi sport arena that has the London Lions Basketball team in residence for the 2013/14 sesaon
Lee Valley White Water Centre - Currently open for public use

All other venues were pre-existing or temporary.

Interestingly there was one venue from the 1948 Olympics that was reused. Wembley Arena was the Olympic pool in 1948 but used for badminton this time round.

[spindrift]

Olympic anniversary athletics event sells out in 75 minutesGrand Prix featuring stars of London 2012 Games sparks rush for tickets amid complaints about booking system.

Tickets for the two-day Grand Prix athletics event at the Olympic Stadium, featuring many of the stars of London 2012, have sold out in 75 minutes amid complaints that the website could not cope with demand.

On the day that the public accounts committee queried whether the enthusiasm generated by the Games was in danger of "fizzling out", the stampede for tickets suggested that the public at least wanted to recapture the feeling of watching the likes of Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Usain Bolt in action.

The 65,000 tickets for each day of competition, on 26 and 27 July, were made available to those who had pre-registered through the British Athletics website. The event, named the Sainsbury's Anniversary Games, will mark exactly one year since the London 2012 opening ceremony.

Organisers insisted the website had not crashed but had slowed to a crawl amid huge demand for tickets that is likely to have left many would-be purchasers disappointed – another echo of the Olympics.

Tickets remain available for the IPC International Challenge, featuring 14 of Britain's 16 Paralympic medallists, on Sunday 28 July.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013...tics-sells-out

[jdjones]

A question, every games has a poster that is used to represent it:

Which poster do you think will or should represent the London Olympic Games of 2012?

Will it be one of the art posters:
(note only 6 of the 12 below are for the Olympics, the other 6 are for the Paras. Working left to right, top row - #1 #3 #4, middle row - #2 #3, bottom row - #2)


or one of the other posters?

[DarJoLe]

LOCOG always considered the Rachel Whiteread to be the 'official' Olympic poster and the Tracey Emin the Paralympic.

The Union Jack infill and the pictograms one were available in the London 2012 shop and weren't considered official posters, although one was used in the Opening Ceremony.

The 204 NOA infills poster (note the ones who didn't give permission to have their flag inside the emblem!) was created by the in-house look team and were used in the venues at Games-time, alongside these ones (which I designed).

[jdjones]

I was going to put your up too, but didn't want to be too forward! Also I noticed that Saudi, Iran and Mexico's flags weren't edited, I assume strict flag protocols.

BTW your Olympic poster was being sold as part of a 12 poster set in the Coventry sale, I didn't want the rest but this was my only chance! The set contained the 6 Olympic art posters, 2 Wenlock Posters, a poster of the Olympic sport pictograms in gold, the poster I've put above with the flags in logos, and yours, can't remember the 12th one.

I will be heading to Ikea next weekend to buy a frame for the poster you designed, I love it, shame I couldn't get the Paras one. They were all 'maxi posters', but I'm sure the one of yours I saw in the services centre was smaller, possibly half the size, is that right or am I imagining things? Either way, as I said, they only had yours in maxi poster size as part of a set.

[DarJoLe]

There probably were smaller ones made at some point but we only designed larger ones (A1?) in the studio at the time.

Yeah I think my one disappeared quite a bit from venues from what I heard. It wasn't even intended to be a poster just something I did when working late one evening, and originally thought it would make a cool T-shirt but licensing weren't particularly interested. I had the logo as a void shape in the centre on one version, but we thought it was too obvious so took it off and kept the lines intersecting. I heard (and even am guilty of this to the day) people kept staring at it trying to work out which lines made up the logo, I can just about do the 2,0 and 1 but even now can never see all of it in one go.

One of the account managers had the poster in a meeting with the agency that did the live site animations and they remarked about it, and it ended up being the basis for the Live Site interval animations... http://vimeo.com/46445273

The athletes' medal certificates which I also designed came from that grid which echoed the podiums and medals. Shame no-one ever actually saw them apart from the athletes!

There's a lot of my work I did at 2012 here: http://figureandgrounduk.com if anyone was interested.

[jdjones]

Actually one of my fellow games makers won one of the remaining athletes' medals and certificate, she framed it and took a photo and put it on Facebook, I the grid in it too. I think the grid was one of the best design elements of the games, and I'm glad it got to such a prominent place as the medals.

Re the seeing the logo in the lines, me and my partner got to the point of getting a picture of the logo, looking at it for 30 seconds and then quickly looking at the grid to see if we can find the image, I can only do the '0'.

What I like about the logo is that you don't realise it was designed to sit within a triangle limit, which as has been mentioned very symbolic for London. It's almost at if these zion conspiracy theorists were along the right lines about hidden messages, just were looking in the wrong place, instead of shuffling the numbers, they should have left them where they are! But I'm sure the triangle to them would represent the 'all seeing eye'

[Aughton]

The art posters were pretty shocking to be honest - all they did was give ammunition for the pre-games doom-mongers to bleat on about how rubbish the Olympics were going to be.

A bit of a shame given that the "shards" graphic design of the tickets, flags, stadiums etc. was so eye-catching.

Oh well, I guess that the art posters won't last long in the memory - but the "look" of the Olympics will.

[jdjones]

Hey I found this photo, now I'm sure I've seen that guy on the far left before!