“The masterplan for the Olympic Park is the collective product of a consortium that incorporated both planners and architects. Our briefing included the task of explaining the city to a wider public while producing infrastructure for one of the most deprived areas of London. From the beginning the team agreed that the master plan should be committed to address existing specificities and that the site should benefit from its Olympic legacy. It is precisely this convergence between the design and the planning, between the efficiencies and their expression that will produce a sustainable legacy and a clear and unique identity to the project.”
“Existing conditions on both sides of the Lea Valley reflect a geography of separation – the city has flown across its space. When talking to the boroughs and the community groups, it became obvious that we should be growing inwards from the edges, not creating new communities in the middle. The project should be about repairing the rift in the city fabric and promoting the greater integration of community with what we can bring forward as an improved environment. So what we are doing is extending existing frameworks and networks into the valley, whatever we put in the valley centre will be something that is accessible to a much broader group of people.”
“One of the intriguing contradictions or tensions that needs to be resolved by this project is that the Olympics are about big lumps of sporting kit and their associated infrastructure, while a successful legacy depends on fine grain subtlety – large sporting facilities do not sit easily in urban contexts.”
“It is not clear to me who the Olympic Village is for. Who is it going to benefit? What actual aspect of the London housing problem is it addressing? Is the Olympic Village really going to benefit the disadvantaged people in the adjacent boroughs or is it just going to replace them? Is the question of affordable housing in London about the problem of retaining middle-class housing or is it about the problems of the very low-income people who live disproportionately in the boroughs adjacent to the site?”
“Previous research we have undertaken at the LSE shows that certain parts of London, rich and poor, are able to deliver density. In fact, the street grids of many of the areas nearby the site are currently supporting relatively high density levels. It is not clear how the scheme will create this density that now characterises some parts of London.”
“My wish for the Olympic Park is for its facilities to be able to deliver the intensity that characterises urban knots, and that these facilities are not limited to the monumental iconography of post-World War II Olympic sites that we have seen repeated over and over again. ”
“I do not think there is anything in the Olympic Project in the Lea Valley that is going to have any significant effect on the real problems of East London. It is going to heal a scar in the urban tissue but it is not going to do anything for East London.”
