One of the deciding reasons that London won the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2012 was their impressive Legacy Programme. Last Sunday (15th August) I led my charity walking group there for the third time. The Olympic Park is accessed via Westfield Stratford City, Europe's largest urban shopping and leisure destination. Launched in September 2011 creating 10,000 jobs, the £2 billion development is the prestigious gateway to the Olympic Park in London and attracted an unprecedented 48 million visitors in the Olympic year. It features the first large-scale use in the world of Pave-gen flooring, creating electricity from kinetic energy of the footsteps of visitors.
The first major sight in
the Park is the stunning London Aquatics Centre designed by the late Zaha Hadid, still the world’s most
technically advanced swimming centre where Olympic Diving Gold Medalist Tom
Daley has chosen to base himself.
But these days the
most impressive thing is the extensive new developments. The former Athletes
Village has been turned into ‘affordable housing’ for key workers and a whole
new district has grown around it with a community, an Academy School and
hard-to-get yet high-priced housing.
The Victoria &
Albert Museum will have a branch there in partnership with The Smithsonian, the
BBC is building a state-of-the art music studio and its orchestra will have a
home in the Park. The London School of Fashion will be there along with a huge
new campus for University College London, East. Sadler's Wells are building a
new theatre for dance. The former Broadcast Centre from the London Games has
become a 1.2m square feet centre for scientific start-ups in co-ordination with the
universities. Despite the extensive building and development there is still
plenty of green space and gardens with real ecological purpose. The worlds
largest and tallest sculpture, the ArcelorMittal Orbit stands in the park and
now has a slide around it!
The newest addition is The London Blossom Garden, a memorial to London's victims of Covid-19 and all of the services who are helping.
I'm listening to Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. It's always uplifting so if you would like a drug-free boost, listen HERE.
8 comments:
Olympic Games always cost the host cities billions of dollars, which local communities can almost never afford. So it is very important that the cities competing for Games do all the thinking about recycling facilities, BEFORE they put in their submissions. I am particularly thrilled that the former Athletes Village has been turned into affordable housing for key workers and a whole new district has grown around it with a community and facilities. This happened in Melbourne, exactly.
The one thing I had never heard of was that the Victoria & Albert Museum will have a branch there in partnership with The Smithsonian. Well done.
Hels: It's all very exciting. It's a 12 minute Tube journey for us to the Park, which we do very frequently. Often it's to visit Westfield to shop, eat or visit the cinema. Also I am a season-ticket holder at West Ham United. (Many of my Melbourne friends are also supporters!)
We also look forward to visiting Sadler's Wells.Work will be carrying on for another nine or ten years.
Hi Bazza - thanks for this 'tour' ... I too was very pleased with the emphasis on the cultural aspects as well as that Legacy Programme. I've never made it out to the Park - and one day must take a day out and get across there.
Another blogging friend/FB friend took her son out to the Slide around the Arcelor-Mittal sculpture - saw pics of them two days ago - said it was amazing. I must make a plan for an exploration day ... thanks for all this interesting information - and great to see you visit quite often. Cheers Hilary
Hilary: One day is hardly enough. I don't know if you've ever been to Kew Gardens but it's as large as that. Several visits required!
Hello Bazza, I can see that London has changed a lot since I was last there, so I have yet even more places to add to my "must see in England" list. Just out of curiosity, what was there before the Olympic Park? It must be a pretty big site altogether.
--Jim
Jim: It's 560 acres, just less than one square mile. Before the park was built it was criss-crossed with old streets full of run-down warehouses and marshy grass-covered wasteland. The development and economic input into the local underprivileged area has been incalculable. However, it's pretty much an enclave and it's doubtful whether the indigenous locals in particular will get much benefit from having world-class fashion retailers, a casino and high-priced housing on their doorstep! Londoners in general have got a great major asset.
Hello Bazza, I wish I had known about the area on my earlier visits to London, before the park was built. It sounds like just the type of place I would love to explore, although perhaps with its isolation and deterioration it might have been rather dangerous.
--Jim
Jim: Not really dangerous but not especially alluring. I do remember as a boy liking a winding old-fashioned street market.
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