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London has taken the next step toward realizing its 2012 Olympics construction plans. On January 17, London's interim Olympic Delivery Authority announced that the master planning team responsible for the city's bid last year, including Foreign Office Architects, HOK Sport, Buro Happold, Allies & Morrison, WS Atkins, and Arup, will also develop London's Olympic Park. The design of the park's eight venues will be tendered separately, and this team will design all the infrastructure elements, including the roads, landscape, bridges and waterways.
The Olympic park will be built in Stratford, a neighborhood in East London. As detailed in London's Olympic bid, it will feature nine new venues, including Zaha Hadid's Aquatic Centre (which is already in development), an 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, an Olympic village, a velodrome, and a media center. Several stadiums which can be deconstructed and placed elsewhere after the games will also be constructed here.
The games' organizers have demonstrated that the area's long-term legacy, which has always been at the core of their vision, is still high on their agenda. Updated plans for the park move it closer to Stratford City, a new business district and transport hub in Stratford. Plans for it include up to 1.5 million square feet of retail space, 1 million square feet of office space, and 500 houses. The park will now be closer to transport links, and will avoid an area of land that, if developed, would require the relocation of residents and businesses. The overall Olympic plan already includes $141.5 billion in government expenditures for the redevelopment of the now-depressed Lower Lea Valley area, where the Park is located.
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