In this two part series, Crave Online explores the new neighborhood growing out of the one time home for the 2012 London Olympics.
In Part One, we look back at the construction and engineering behind the former Olympic Park – the buildings that laid the groundwork for the new East Village near Stratford on London’s east end.
Hosting an Olympics changes a city — even one as big and ancient as London. However, while some host cities let their specially built facilities fade into the past, London is transforming its 2012 constructions into a new neighborhood and attraction for tourists and locals alike.
I covered the 2012 Summer Olympics extensively here at Crave Online. Walking through England’s capital day and night during those Games revealed a world of centuries-old structures blending in with new construction on the very edge of modern engineering.
Some of those budding structures were merely timed to promote London’s evolution while hundreds of thousands of people visited for the world’s largest athletic event. Others were obviously tied directly into the Olympics themselves. But all highlight the levels of investment and endeavor Olympic venues endured to welcome the world’s athletes.
Now all of that design and assembly is giving birth to a new London neighborhood, the East Village and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Designs, budgets, environmental impact reports and sustainability studies immediately followed the awarding of the 2012 Games in 2005 as multiple projects were in pre-planning stages in hopeful anticipation of beating out Paris for the 2012 games.
All that construction remained in place after the Games and is now ready to serve other needs. Specially built athletics venues will remain to host future sporting events, and the general purpose facilities will go on serving the mission assigned to them — though they’ll always be remembered for emerging onto the world during these Olympics.
The star of Olympic construction was the massive Olympic Park itself. Set in Stratford in East London near West Ham, it took 10 architects to complete the Park’s design. At 246 hectares, the Park was large enough to encompass 357 football fields. It took 700 million manpower hours by more than 30,000 construction professionals and engineers to complete it.
Across its multiple venues, the park held more than 200,000 temporary seats and 7,500 temporary lights hemmed in by 75 miles of fencing.
To conduct electricity to the entire park, more than 130 km of power cables had to be installed 30 meters underground in two tunnels more than 6 km long. That feature alone cost £300 million. Another 350 miles of telecommunication cable crisscross the facilities — enough to wrap around the London Eye 1.3 million times.
The Park’s more than 2,500 tents could have covered the entire width and breadth of Hong Kong. Those tents could’ve sat atop more than 539,000 square feet of concrete ballast.
In keeping with the 21st century Olympic ideal of environmental responsibility and sustainable design, 2 million tons of dirt used in forging and landscaping the site had to be cleansed of all detected pollutants before so much as a rivet could be screwed in place. And portions of the building materials removed from the site were transported and recycled in a repair of the M25 motorway.
Before any construction phases could begin, engineers had to be certain they weren’t destroying history. Archeologists hit the scene first, digging 140 excavation pits. They found a 19th century boat, Iron Age skeletons, a roadway built in the 1700s and a hut from the Bronze Age.
Now that the Summer Olympics moved on to Brazil, 8,000 homes are being built on the Park grounds. Many are already complete with more reaching the final building stages as I type this.
The Olympic Stadium – the home to the Opening Ceremonies and the Track and Field in 2012, seated 80,000. It’s currently undergoing renovation down to a smaller capacity venue with 55,000 lightweight, removable steel seats. The Hammers of West Ham United will play their Premiere League games their after the Rugby World Cup swings through in 2015.
The Stadium contains more than 10,000 tons of steel, which is still lighter than other stadiums of the same size. Its 14 lighting towers were installed because London 2012 was the first Olympics broadcast in HD, and that resolution demands perfect lighting.
The Velodrome was he HQ for the London Games’ indoor cycling events,Affectionately called The Pringle for its familiar, chip-ish shape, the building required more than 300,000 nails to lock down the wooden cycling track.
The winner of the 2012 Supreme Award of the Institution of Structural Engineers, its curvature is intended to allow natural ventilation and heat control. Its lightweight cable net roof weighs less than half that of any other covered Velodrome in the world, helping create a highly efficient building. It’s made from 17 km of steel webbing — or more than 10 miles of cable. That’s twice the height of Mount Everest.
Now open to other cycling events, athletes can still train on the indoor track with supervision. Outside, the East Village grounds include miles of bike paths for recreational riders, mountain bike trails and a soon to be completed BMX run.
Finally, the London Aquatics Centre – once the home of Michael Phelps’ most recent heroics — is now open to the public. A first hand inspection reveals one of the most beautiful indoor swimming spots on Earth, with its main competition pool set aside a smaller training area.
Behind the scenes, there are two recreational pools for local use and backstage practice facilities for divers and other aquatic athletes.
The presence of facilities like these are going to serve as prime attractions for the new East Village neighborhood growing in the footprint of what were successful Olympics just a couple years ago.
