The Olympics and Urban Regeneration

par Kay HUGHES

25 janvier 2012 - Londres

Télécharger la présentation (anglais uniquement).pdf

I have been working on the project since 2006. I will talk about how the site has changed. First of all, I just want to remind everybody what the event is.  It is an absolutely massive event.  We have got over 17,500 athletes coming to London and we have got 22,000 media, so the eyes of the world will be on us here in London in July. 
There are 7.7 million tickets sold, 4.4 million of those for the Olympic Park in London.  Specifically because of time, I am going to talk about the Olympic Park and the transformation of that area in Stratford.  Then we will convert the Park and we will hold the Paralympic Games, which take place for two weeks.  Then after the Games, we enter what we call the transformation stage.  As you go through it, the fence that surrounds the perimeter of the Park comes down and then we look to connect out to the surrounding areas. 
I will talk a little bit about our structure.  We report to the Olympic Board.  The Olympic Board has members from the British Olympic Association and the Greater London Authority (GLA).  There is also the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG).  In fact, we are three structures.  We are the Olympic Delivery Authority, so we have the public money to change and revitalise this site and create the Gamestime venues.  Then we hand that to LOCOG, who took over the park on January 10th.  They run the show; they are privately funded, they raise sponsorship in order to hold the event.  Then postGames, we hand over to the OPLC, which Richard is from.  This is the Olympic Park Legacy Company.  They will look at regenerating the Park and putting new homes in, using the platforms that we have created.
I will give you a reminder of where it is.  I am sure you all know.  What is interesting about this is that first of all, the site was on the boundary of four boroughs, three of which are the most deprived in Europe.  The site is also linked to the Lee Valley.  There is an opportunity to create a green link all the way down to the river.  The other thing to remember is that the East End of London is traditionally where all of the smoke is blown.  It is traditionally where all the sewage has run down the river.  It has been the poorest part of London for many, many years.  This was an opportunity to clean up an area which was not traditionally well looked after and create a new environment in a very English way.  This involves resolving a new community around a park, in the same way that you have Regent’s Park or Hyde Park.
Back in 2006, the site was crisscrossed with infrastructure.  The reason that the site was not really developed is because it had all the riverways running through it.  The East Coast trainline ran through it.  A large sewer, which was built in the 1830s, ran through the site.  There were a lot of factories around it and the A12 ran through the top.  It was a completely physically disconnected area. 
The site was in a very neglected condition back in 2006.  We had some wildlife and they had some perches.  There were very few elements of heritage in the park and we have tried to retain those.  Across the whole of the Park, there were 52 pylons, which carried all of the power over the site.  This gives some indication of the challenge that we had back in 2006.  There was a cycle track and that is where the velodrome is going now.  It links the new project back into past uses of the site.
There is a cycle track on one site.  There is the Stratford train line, which runs to Paris.  The A12 cut right through the site here.  We had train lines running straight through the site in the centre.  There was sewage and then the other train line running through the far side.  It completely physically disconnected.  In fact, if you wanted to go from Hackney Wick on one side across to Plaistow on the other, it was quite a long journey.  You had to cut all the way around the side. 
The first thing that we had to do was; we split the programme up into several stages. There was the dig and design and then we had the big build.  Prior to that, we had the startup of the organisation.  We demolished 192 buildings across the site and we reused about 97% of the material from that in the rebuilding and the remodelling of the site. For those of you who have not been there or who do not know the site, we have a particular target. There is a site called Eton Manor, which is just being completed.  This will have legacy tennis and legacy hockey. 
There is the velodrome and the BMX, which will be at the centre of a legacy cycling offer, which will give cycling to all people. The hockey venue is a temporary venue and the pitch will be moved post-Games. The basketball venue is a temporary venue.  The Olympic Village, which will house the 16,500 athletes during the games, will provide 2,800 new homes post-Games. The handball arena down to the South is a legacy venue. Then there is the water polo and the aquatic centre.  The water polo is temporary; the aquatic venue is a permanent venue that will become smaller.  Then of course, there is the stadium.
The point of this is that the requirements are set out in the big book, so we had to provide all these sporting venues, but there was no legacy use for them.  That meant that we had no way of filling the capacity of any of these venues, but somebody asked earlier what investigation was done.  Quite a lot of people from the ODA went out to Athens and they went to Beijing.  Six months or a year after the Games in those places, they were dusty plazas, with fences around them and there was no access to them.  We were determined to ensure that we did not build venues that had no viable use postGames. 
Also, I will just skip back to a point.  In cleaning up the whole of the site, our figure is that 75p in every pound we spend goes into the ground and into the infrastructure.  In some senses, the venues are the icing on the cake.  The interesting thing that has happened on the site is the cleaning of the soil and all the enabling works.  The topography for this whole site has completely changed.  Then there is also the installation of all of the new power stations that have been put in on the site.  In thinking of the London Games, we have referenced London, with particular landmarks in London, to create our own new buildings. 
We have two energy centres, which supply heating and cooling across the site to the venues.  Then they have the ability to adapt post-Games to provide heating to the 5,800 homes that will come postGames.  This is actually operated as design, build, finance and operate.  It is with Cofely, which is a French supplier, on a 40year contract.  Associated with that, we had to build all of the other primary infrastructure, such as the substation.  This then takes all of the infrastructure across the site, ready for future supplies and ready to be connected to future housing and venues.  Then we had to take all the waste water and sewage away from the site.  Not only were we cleaning it, but we were putting it in all of the major infrastructure, to allow this site to develop in the future.
Then in terms of the disassociation of all of the different parts of the site, we put in 33 new bridges, which is a substantial amount of connections, running across the site.  Early on, we looked at the crowdflow analysis.  A lot of the widths of all of the walkways are dictated on Gamesflow requirements, which of course we will not need post-Games.  There is the width of the requirement during the Games; it is safe to walk across and we do not have crushing of spectators etc.  How we have designed them is that we have temporary and permanent bridges.  The temporary bridge is to the South and the permanent bridge is to the North.  This is just to explain the concept of the bridges in the Park.
As those go in, they have all the connections that allow the utilities to go from one zone to another, which we could not do before.  The approach to them was that they were simple; we were not trying to create lots of bridges with iconic shapes to them; we wanted to connect the ground from one side to another.  Also, even though they are simple, we were giving them character by using colours and references to give wayfinding to these places.  There is a bridge in the centre of the Park which follows this idea of the land travelling from one side to another.  This is 52m wide during the Games and then postGames, it will be dug out and will become two bridges.  It will reveal one of the few heritage elements that were left on the site. 
The underside of this bridge will bring light down to the waterways in the middle of the Park.  All of the waterways have been cleaned.  The shopping trolleys, a car and all the other things have been taken out of it.  A lot of the existing wildlife was moved further up the Park, in the Lee Valley and it is going to be brought back postGames.
Now, I will talk a little bit more about the venues.  There is a venue that I was involved with back in 2006.  Zaha Hadid had won a competition prior to the Games, for a much longer building.  When we did the crowdflow analysis on it, it did not actually fit on the site, with all the needs that they have for the front of house and back of house for the Games. 
However, the other issue with it was that it was a huge volume.  Anybody who knows sporting buildings and swimming pools will know that swimming pools are the most expensive buildings to heat, maintain and operate.  It was absolutely essential that very early on, we grasped this building and we reduced the size of it.  There is no other sporting event that will require 17,500 spectators.  I think for the European Championships, you need about 2,500.  This is where we began to develop this approach to temporary and permanent facilities very early on.
On either side, we have temporary stands with seating for the Games and a legacy building in the centre. Post-Games, this building will be reduced and those temporary wings will be taken off.  It will become a much smaller legacy building.  The other thing that is important to say about this is that it is a 50m pool.  It has always been an aspiration to have four 50m pools in London, one North, one South, one East and one West.  We have one in Crystal Palace and this is only the second one.  We had an established need for a project like this.  Then there are diving boards designed by Zaha Hadid. 
Regarding the stadium, the briefing for this very early on was that it had to have the ability to be reduced to a 25,000seat stadium that would be kept for athletics postGames.  It would have 80,000 seats for the opening and closing ceremonies.  It was a very similar approach to the aquatics.  We built for legacy and we add on for the games. What it has proven to be is an incredibly flexible and adaptable building and John Barrow will talk a little bit more about it later.
In all of these buildings, in the early days when the ODA was set up, we had a whole series of themes, priority themes that were pushed through all the work that we did.  One of them was sustainability; another was health and safety and then we had inclusivity and equality.  Of those, the approach evolved as we move on to the stadium.  This is a building that has a significantly reduced amount of embodied energy in it, compared to Beijing, for example.  We were very determined to make sure that we made these games as sustainable as we can.
We call it a stadium island.  There is this idea of the stadium in the city.  However, there is also an idea of linking it into the landscape and beginning to make it a building that is approachable for pedestrians and has a use postGames.  There is the handball arena, which is a legacy venue.  It is used for handball and I think for goalball for Paralympics.  It is actually a necessary multiuse sports venue for the postGames period that sits on the border of Hackney Wick.  On the inside, natural light whirls come in to reduce the energy in running the venue.
The velodrome is designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and is a highlyrefined building.  Again, it adopts this approach of minimal embodied energy.  The roof on this is a cablenet roof which is incredibly low weight, with very little use of steel work in it, considering the size of the venue. This is a 6,000-seater venue for the Games and then, as I said, it remains postGames and then it has new cycling tracks around it.  You can do road cycling, crosscountry biking and a whole series of different activities, as well as BMX cycling.  I will show you an interior view of the velodrome.  On the day that it opened, Chris Hoy ran around it.  It is a highlysustainable project.
Then we will move on the basketball arena, which is a 12,000seater venue.  We had so many venues and this was one we did not need.  In fact, we used to have fencing on the site as well.  A deal was done for fencing and the money has now been used to extend ExCel.  ExCel is probably the biggest exhibition centre in Europe, so there is a legacy value there.  Regarding the basketball arena, this is essentially a portalframe building that was put up for the Games, with 12,000 seats. 
It was a completely new way of thinking; nobody had ever dared build a temporary venue that was of this scale.  It works on the basis that it has a skin around it.  We have worked on the skin to make it look good for the Games, but actually inside, all the seating in there is temporary.  It is rented and it will be returned to the company who owns it postGames.  We are always hoping that Rio will take on the tent itself for the Games in 2016. We have made plans for how to light the exterior for the Games, to animate it.  In the interior of the venue, we have carried the logo and the branding for that through to the Park, into the venues and into the seats for them.
There is a building called the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) and there is the Press Centre.  It is a 100,000m2 building, for the 22,000 press during the Games.  We have given you some idea of the infrastructure that needs to go with that, because all of the pipework on the front of this building is temporary.  It is there to service the Press, who are all sitting inside; it will keep those spaces cool and keep them managed for them.  In fact, I do not think that many of them emerge and look at the Games; they just look at it through their TV cameras inside this building.
Finally, we have the Olympic Village.  As Bridget mentioned back in 2007, Bovis Lend Lease were going to be building the Village for us; it was a developer deal.  They could no longer raise the money on the market, so that was when the ODA stepped in to support them in funding it. Then recently, we have now sold off portions of that to private developers to recoup the money that we spent at that time.
The appearance of the site changed greatly between 2007 and 2009. That whole valley, the whole landscape, has been changed to open up the river.  At one point, back in 2006, most people did not even know that there was a river there.  We have smoothed the slopes and opened the Park up, making it a really viable park in the centre of London that people will want to go to. 
Then there is the glue in between, because if we did not have the landscape, we would not have those fresh areas that make living in a city so amenable.  It will offer the potential for people to make this place their own postGames. There was talk about how people will interact with this site. I do not think we will know until the fences come down.  At the moment, we have got huge security fences around it; we have to have them there for the Games.  We have a loop road that runs around the site. This takes all of the athletes around it.  Post-Games, the fences come down, the loop road connects into the systems around it and the plan is that this will then open out and engage with the local surroundings.
We have another legacy element, which I have not really touched on.  In the centre, there is The Orbit, which is designed by Anish Kapoor. It is a Mayor’s Project. It will bring people to this area. It is an iconic statement and I think everybody will want to go there.  It will make this part of London a visitor destination for the next 10 years.  As well as coming to see where the Games were, there is something else to draw them there.