The Games masterplan

As construction work begins on the London 2012 Olympic venues, Host City examines the crucial projects that are central to an enduring legacy

"The point of the Olympics is to focus the minds of the next generation and allow people to accomplish their dreams," says Ricky Burdett, chief adviser on architecture and urbanism at the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) – the UK government organisation responsible for building venues and infrastructure for the Games. But providing a platform for a generation to realise its ambitions requires much more than idealism. The key concerns when it comes to the process of commissioning a project, Burdett says, are "design, deliverability and functionality".

A masterpiece in design for temporary use, the Olympic
Stadium will make use of temporary structures to reduce
seating after the Games to less than one third of original capacity

Focus on the future
The construction strategy for London 2012 is focused on creating permanent benefits for London. The ODA is taking great care to dispel any scepticism, such as that expressed by former president of Royal Institute of British Architects, Jack Pringle, who warned of the risk of creating a "tarmac and plasterboard Games."

Burdett explains: "My remit is concerned with how individual elements of the Olympics – everything from the quality of a handrail to the experience of walking through the Olympic Park – will fit into the urban whole. This approach is fundamental in creating something that will function long beyond 2012."

The 2012 Olympics will be a major catalyst for regenerating a deprived area of East London around Stratford. As one of the most disadvantaged areas of the English capital, Stratford will benefit immensely from hosting the Games. Even before the Olympic bid was won, the area was the recipient of investment in areas such as transport and housing, which will help support the Olympic project.

One shot
Two-and-a-half years have now passed since London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. In the immediate future, financial planning and time management are the primary concerns. John Armitt, non-executive chairman of the ODA, is responsible for delivering the 2012 Games on budget and on time. "It's one of the highest profile and most complex projects in the world, but it has the fundamental issue that there is only one date and therefore we can't miss that date," he says.

Armitt does not want the budget for the event, which has already trebled since London was announced as the winner in 2005, to rise above the USD 18.2bn (GBP 9.3bn) announced by Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell in March 2007. The security bill alone for the games has risen to USD 2.3bn (GBP 1.2bn), six times the USD 390m (GBP 200m) forecast in London's bid. "We know how much money we've got to work with and that's it," he says.

Heneghan Peng’s design for the Olympic Footbridge
features multiple coloured lights during Games-time

London is also hoping to match the success of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. While Sydney and Athens have both complained about the cost of maintaining little-used venues, the Barcelona Games revitalised the city and helped define Spain as an economic force in Western Europe.

Designing for life
The design of the Olympic Park – the park in Stratford that will encompass the facilities and associated infrastructure for hosting the event – takes full account of this pressure to deliver a successful event and lasting legacy within budget. Design consultancy EDAW has been put in charge of devising a masterplan for the Olympic Park that fulfils these aims. The EDAW consortium includes engineering consultancy Buro Happold, involved in the Wembley Stadium and Arsenal FC's Emirates Stadium projects, both in London.

The Olympic Park, located in the Lower Lea Valley in East London, will be the focus of attention during the London 2012 Games with up to 180,000 spectators expected to enter each day. The park spans two million square metres, or 500 acres, of the Lower Lea Valley. It is being designed to ensure that visitors are involved closely with the Games, whether they are watching the 100 metres final in the Olympic Stadium or sitting in front of one of the big screens relaying live Games action throughout the Park.

The Olympic Park encompasses a number of venues. The focal point of the park is the Olympic Stadium, which will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics events. The Aquatics Centre will host diving, swimming, synchronised swimming and water polo, with a spectator capacity of 15,000 for swimming and 5,000 for diving. The London Velopark will include a 6,000 seat indoor velodrome for track cycling, as well as a 6,000 seat outdoor track for BMX racing – a new Olympic sport being introduced for the first time at Beijing 2008.

The Olympic Hockey Centre contains two arenas, with 15,000 and 5,000 seats respectively. Three indoor arenas (Olympic Park Arenas 1-3), which will host basketball, fencing, handball, and the fencing and shooting disciplines of the modern pentathlon.

Creating this vast array of sporting facilities is a major investment, and post-Games plans are integral to EDAW’s thinking. Jason Prior, principal of EDAW, says: "We are working towards not only delivery of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 but also a legacy for East London for the next 50 years. This is regeneration investment on a large scale that all the stakeholders involved – the boroughs, the government and the Olympic stakeholders – have been working towards. However, it might have taken many more years to achieve without the catalyst of the Games."

Olympic infrastructure
The Olympic Park will be powered by a mix of sustainable sources, including tri-generation, the combination of cooling, heat and power. "We have a wind turbine providing six per cent of Village energy and two combined heat and power plants going up on site," says Burdett. This works alongside locally generated and off-site renewable energy.

The masterplan also calls for sustainable water management and a closed-loop waste system for more comprehensive recycling. By 2020, the Lea Valley could be largely self-sufficient in terms of water. Post-2012 legacy plans call for the area to be transformed into Europe’s largest urban park.

Plans for upgrading public transport facilities in London were a decisive element in London’s bid to host the Olympics. Central to this aspect of the bid was the Olympic Javelin service. This high speed train will run between the newly refurbished St Pancras International station in North London, the Olympic Park at the new Stratford International station, and Ebbsfleet in Kent, where spectators travelling by Eurostar will be able to pick up the Javelin service and reach the Olympic Park within 10 minutes.

High-speed trains will enter the country at Dover and will travel to Stratford, with a two-hour total journey time from Paris. Shuttle services will bring visitors to the Games within seven minutes of leaving Kings Cross station. Local authorities anticipate a resulting acceleration of the area's regeneration, with the creation of jobs and business opportunities before, during and after the Games. The legacy of transport upgrades in the name of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games is already being felt before the Games has even begun. The London borough of Newham now has its own international passenger station on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Plans are also in place to avoid congestion in this already extremely busy city. There will be two major park-and-ride sites off the M25 with a combined capacity of 12,000 cars, within 25 minutes of the Olympic Park. Another 9,000 planned park-and-ride spaces will be made available at Ebbsfleet.

Allowing athletes and spectators to get around quickly once inside the park is another major priority. All of the venues in the Olympic Park will be accessed through a network of footbridges and walkways. A central unifying concourse will carry spectators and competitors over the roads, waterways and rail lines that cross the site.

The Olympic Village, which will house the athletes during the Games, is being built next to the Park to allow approximately 17,000 athletes and officials easy access to training and competition venues. The Olympic Park Loop Road will connect the Village to each venue, giving athletes easy access to venues. The ODA says 80 per cent of athletes will be able to reach their venues from the Village in less than 20 minutes.

The Olympic Footbridge
At the centre of the 2012 Olympic Park, a footbridge spanning 26m will form part of the central pedestrian concourse to link the Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre and the Basketball Arena. Irish architect Heneghan Peng, working with engineer Adams Kara Taylor, is designing the footbridge.

The bridge is designed to be a visual continuation of the concourse, and incorporates an area comprising a surface composed of many coloured lights. These lights can be programmed to give a confetti-like appearance, to reveal the Olympic rings embedded within the pattern, or to present the colours of a victorious country’s flag. During the Games the bridge will have a total width of around 60 metres to accommodate increased spectator numbers.

After the Games, sections of the bridge will be permanently removed to leave two narrower bridges that span either side of Carpenters Lock, a unique 1930’s historic structure on the River Lea Waterway. The artificially lit surface will be taken up to reveal a grass amphitheatre that reflects the topography of the surrounding park, allowing access between the elevated concourse and the waterway.

In total, more than 30 temporary and permanent bridges and 20km of roads in and around the Olympic Park will be built, creating a compact and integrated Park and leaving an open and accessible area once the event is over.

The Olympic Stadium
At the centre of the action during the 2012 Olympics will be the London Olympic Stadium, for which USD 920m (GBP 469m) has been set aside. Unusually, the ODA did not hold a competition to choose the designer for its most important Olympic building, instead selecting HOK Sport + Venue + Event to design the venue. The company unveiled their design in November 2007, the plans epitomising the event’s practical, future-oriented approach.

The stadium will have a Games capacity of approximately 80,000. After the Games it will be downsized to seat 25,000. This will be achieved through the use of temporary structures included in the design during the Games.

The EDAW consortium began preparing the land for the stadium began in mid-2007, with construction due to starting in summer 2008 and completion scheduled for 2011. Designers HOK are supported by structural engineers Buro Happold and Team McAlpine, which was the only consortium to meet all prequalification criteria to be the main contractor. McAlpine has extensive experience in designing and building sports venues, including the Olympic Stadium for the 2000 Sydney Games and London’s Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal FC. The centrepiece of the stadium, the track-and-field arena, will be excavated by Buro Happold out of the soft clay on the site, around which there will be seating for 25,000. HOK have designed a temporary steel structure that will be built up from the "bowl" to accommodate a further 55,000 spectators. The upper "bowl" is supported on a scaffold-like structure while the remaining permanent seats are sunk into the ground, giving spectators a close view of the track and field.

One particularly distinctive feature will be a large mural of historical Olympic champions, participating countries' flags, and sponsors' logos that will cover the stadium. Artists will set to work on a 65ft high plastic wrap that will encircle the 1,000-yard circumference of the stadium.

The most controversial part of the design was the roof. Throughout 2007, rumours circulated in the press that the stadium will not include a roof structure, except over an area for VIPs and executives. However HOK have recently announced that the roof will cover approximately two thirds of the stadium's seating and will be constructed using "cable net" technology, similar to that used in Munich 1972's Olympiastadion. Despite this, the design will still leave a potential 26,000 spectators exposed to Britain's erratic August weather. According to HOK, the fabric membrane roof will be supported by a steel frame that stretches around the stadium. An open-weave fabric curtain circling the roof will provide additional shelter.

In another unusual move, the ODA and HOK decided that no retail space would be created inside the stadium. This will cut costs by reducing the associated infrastructure and requirements for greater fire protection. HOK have designed retail "party concourses" outside the stadium inspired by the successful "fan zones" at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, where spectators gathered to eat and drink and watch the action on big screens.

The ODA’s legacy plan calls for the grandstand to remain, retaining all the state of the art media, changing room, conferencing and banqueting facilities. The top two tiers of the steel and concrete structure will be dismantled, leaving the lowest tier. Current plans are for the 25,000 seat stadium to then be converted into an athletics venue with a sports training, science and medicine centre.

The Aquatics Centre
The Aquatics Centre will be the first of the new Olympic venues to be completed. It will include a 50m Olympic standard competition pool, a 50m warm up pool, a diving pool and two demountable water polo pools, one 50m long and one at 38m.

In June 2007, Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre was redesigned in order to scale back costs by Balfour Beatty, Hochtief and Eiffel, the contractors shortlisted to build the centre. "Every design has to go through a degree of editing," says Burdett.

The signature roof is one of the key features that will be scaled-back again. In November 2006, the ODA and Zaha Hadid unveiled a redesigned centre, which at 1,300 sq m, was nearly a third of the size of the original.

After the Games, temporary grandstands will be dismantled, and the water polo pools lifted out and relocated. The main Olympic pool will then remain as an international standard swimming competition venue with seating for 3,500, with the other pools partitioned off to allow leisure and competition events to take place at the same time. New health and fitness facilities should ensure the long term viability of the building within the local community.

Village for the people
The Olympic Village comprises accommodation for all athletes and team officials. It will provide beds for approximately 17,000 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games and 6,500 in the Paralympic Games. In 2007, a consortium led by Australian property giant Lend Lease won the contract to build the Olympic Village. The USD 7.8bn (GBP 4bn) contract also involves most of the housing, commercial and hotel developments in the Stratford City development in east London. The consortium features British housing firms Crosby Lend Lease, First Base and East Thames Group.

The village will have 17,320 beds and provide each athlete with 16m˛ floor space. Each apartment will have a TV, internet access, and a private courtyard. The dining hall will cater for 5,500 athletes at a time. Besides accommodation, it will comprise shops, restaurants, medical, media and leisure facilities, large areas of open space and a water feature. After the Games, the Village will become part of the overall Stratford City regeneration scheme, including a new regional shopping centre with additional leisure, office and residential areas. The Village will provide over 4,000 homes, with a mix of affordable tenures, shared equity and housing for sale.

The wider regeneration of the Thames Gateway, which aims to provide extra housing in areas in East London, was central to the 2012 bid. Over the next 15 years, 20,000 to 30,000 new homes will be built. Much of this accommodation will be based in the former Olympic Village. Burdett says: "Once the area is built, we must ensure that the Olympic Village is integrated and does not turn its back on neighbouring communities."