THE OLYMPIC PARK 2012-LONDON

GEORGE HARGREAVES
The London 2012 Olympic Park is one of the most
significant new pieces of urban realm to have been
created in living memory.
102 hectare site and has masterminded its transformation
from contaminated industrial land into a 21st century park.
London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the In the north of the park, sculpted landforms
2.5km2 Olympic Park is the largest new urban park in slope down to the naturalised banks of the
the capital since the Victorian era and is a catalyst for River Lea, planted with reeds and rushes.
regeneration in East London
The original brownfield site was one of the most
contaminated in the capital containing a post-war
munition dump, battery and match making factories as
well as 52 electricity pylons, neglected waterways
and a Fridge Mountain.
The landscape design team, led by LDA Design, has helped to transform the site,
designing the parklands not only to host hundreds of thousands of visitors each day
during the Olympic and Paralympic Games which were held during the summer of 2012
but also to become a permanent park for the Capital.

The hour-glass shape of the site naturally divided the park

into a wilder northern half and more urban southern half,
connected by over five kilometres of improved river banks.
The previously canalised River Lea has been transformed
into a three dimensional mosaic of wetland, swales, wet
woodland, dry woodland and meadow, together forming an
absorbent flood-control measure and also ensuring that no
spoil has had to be removed.
In fact waste has been minimised at every stage of the
project so that over 95% of existing site material has been
recycled within the park.
Ultimately over four thousand semi-mature trees will have
been planted setting the scene for the creation of 45
hectares of new habitat post-Games while over a quarter of
a million wetland plants have already been planted in the
improved water courses.
Seating is built into the
landscape in hard-wearing
Brazilian cumaru timber.

The Olympic park with the

stadium in the background

 Specific habitats and wildlife installations have been

integrated into the design to support key species identified in
the Olympic Park Biodiversity Action Plan, such as kingfisher,
sand martin and European eel.
While the North Park is characterized by dramatic sculpted
landform that settles the venues into the landscape, the South
Park is focused upon the 800 metre long London 2012 Olympic
Gardens.
The gardens formed a breakout space for thousands of
spectators during the Games and will become a key component
of the pleasure grounds that will entice the crowds once the
Park re-opens to the public.
The gardens feature a ground-breaking planting design divided
into five geographical zones Europe, North America,
Southern Hemisphere and Asia telling the story of Britains
heritage as a plant collecting nation.

The Olympic park with temporary

Soundforms stage

The north park

consists of picturesque
sculpted landforms and
wild river banks, while
the south plazas and
towpath edges.

The main stadium is

surrounded by wildflower
Attenuation ponds filter greywater
from the Athletes Village and provide meadows and a restored
iron footbridge.
biodiverse wet woodland habitats.

The planting features both drifts and strips of herbaceous

planting and grasses, held in a structure of arcing hedges and
accentuated by specimen trees and shrubs, with lawns fronting
onto the cleaned up waterways.
The Park will form the centerpiece to the Legacy Masterplan
which will provide up to eight permanent venues for major
concerts and sporting events as well as thousands of new
homes in five new neighbourhoods complete with new schools
and health facilities for the new communities.
This will create 8,000 new jobs plus a 2,500-strong temporary
construction workforce leaving an important legacy and acting
as a major catalyst for regeneration in the east of London.
The northern half is a
Hargreaves proposition was that the design of public open
more natural landscape of
space takes place around three poles: Site, Sustainability and meadows and woodland
Memorability.

Soundforms stage

The landform was pulled back and sculpted mounds out of the
displaced soil,which allowed us to reuse all of the material on
site.
The width of the former concourses would have resulted in nearvertical walls meeting the rivers, but now the land slopes down,
via meandering pathways and bushy banks, to naturalised, reedplanted edges floodable landscape that has removed the flood
risk to almost 5,000 homes further north.
The design strategy for the park is separated into two zones
formed by the natural hourglass shape of the site.
The southern end, around the main stadium, Orbit and Aquatics
Centre, is conceived as a busy, paved world of concourses and
entertainment plazas imagined to grow into a South Bank of
The dotted carpet
the East End after the Games.
sections of Heneghan
The northern half is a more natural landscape of meadows and
Pengs footbridge will
be removed postwoodland, closer to the marshes and forests further north.
Games, leaving a
Seating is built into the landscape in hardwearing
These two distinct worlds are linked by a vast sea of tarmac and slender, diagonal, Zresin-bound gravel named London Way that serves as the centre blade crossing.
of the park to channel visitors between the venues along its
length.
It had lighting columns, each topped with a helical wind turbine, and populated for the
Games with an inevitable cacophony of sponsor pavilions and white-tent concession
stands.

Either side of this broad, raised spine, which is bowed

north-south across the park like a hogs back, the
topography slopes down to the water to provide an
alternative, more enjoyable route through the park.
In the southern reaches, around Orbit Circus and Stadium
Island, this takes the form of conventional towpath edges,
where the original concrete river walls are exposed and the
occasional iron footbridge has been lovingly restored
although unfortunately fenced off for the Games.
These paths back on to banks planted with wildflower
meadows, an impressive sight of golds and blues now in
bloom.
That, who have planted patterns that recall the plan forms
of buildings that were here before. It is one of the few
places in the park where the history of the site is
remembered and celebrated, not swept under the pristine
green carpet.
This riot of flowers and shrubs represents the history of
British horticultural ambition, with plants collected from four
different climatic zones.
Progressing north, there are two footbridges connected by
a diagonal Z-blade walkway that crosses the Carpenters
Lock below, with a slick, mirror-polished undercarriage.
During the Games, the triangular voids are cleverly filled in
to form a single 55m-wide deck

Attenuation ponds filter greywater from the Athletes

Village and provide biodiverse wet woodland habitats.
These are attenuation pools that filter greywater from the
village, a landscape feature that extends into the
development and helps to soften the gridiron in the
manner of a Dutch singel.
Developed through physical models, the northern
landscaping has a decidedly picturesque feel, with views
of venues carefully framed by the rise and dip of planted
berms, clumps of trees placed to direct the gaze, with long
vistas opening up as you progress through the park.
In places, it is hard to shake off the feeling of being on an
overly managed stage set, an imported ideal of
naturalised landscape completely alien to the tradition of
London parks, and even further from the Lea Valley.
Like the Athletes Village, it is a placeless piece of
placemaking, a Truman Show conception of an
imaginary,perfect nature that has more in common with
the choreographed mounds of a Florida golf course than
the wilds of the post-industrial East End.

CRISSY FIELD'S TRANSFORMATION

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
From 1995 to 2001 Hargreaves Associates led a team
in the conversion from paved site to new public park. 45
acres of asphalt airstrip, roadway and fencing were
removed and recycled for use beneath new pathways
and parking areas.
Opened in May 2001, Crissy Field is at the northern
edge of the San Francisco Presidio, a historically
significant decommissioned army base now part of the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The newly designed tidal wetlands restore the natural
condition that existed almost a century earlier before the
army began to use the site as a dump and landfill.
Once excavated, the remaining fill from the wetlands
was recycled and used on the airfield to give the new
grass field extra height and definition.
Approximately 3,800 cubic yards of soil were cooked
on site and returned to their excavated origin,
substantially reducing the cost of off hauling.
.Excavation of other plumes of petroleum and pesticide
contamination was intentionally avoided to further
reduce the day lighting of plumes.

With its completion, Crissy Field integrates a

diversity of recreational uses, festival areas, and
green spaces into a dynamic ecological
environment within the context of an enduring
historical landmark and vibrant urban surroundings.
SIX MAJOR ZONES NOW DEFINE CRISSY
FIELD:
the rehabilitation of grass field;
a curving promenade for walkers, joggers, and
bikers;
the newly restored tidal wetlands;
beaches and dunes; two main activity areas
West Bluff, a picnic area,
East Beach, which accommodates the
community of avid windsurfers who come for
the bays strong winds

The park is extensively used, beyond any local expectations, and is beloved as an icon
of San Francisco its residents and visitors. Whether used for individual recreation and
reflection, family reunions, or large special events the park retains its dramatic refection
of history, culture, and its environmental setting.

As a citys iconic front yard, a reinvented waterfront-richer for their contrast with its past--can reshape a
citys identity:
Seam and barrier, play land and profit center, civic
stage and common ground for young and old,
cultural landscape and contemporary expression of
place and time.
It is at these transitional edges that both habitat and
human experience can be richest and most
interdependent.
. The park reinvents what was a ramshackle military
installation (wooden barracks, warehouses, a rail
line, and acres of asphalt) and now includes a 17acre tidal lagoon and inlet, an education center,
several beaches, dunes, an amphitheater, a fishing
pier and a huge lawn--a palimpsest of the West
Coasts first urban grass airstrip.
To the south of Crissy Field, beyond the dramatic
bluffs of the Golden Gate and Doyle Drive--an
elevated New Deal WPA highway that provides
vehicular access to the Golden Gate Bridge--the city
rises. Today, Doyle Drive is being totally
reengineered, yielding positive changes at Crissy
Field. Crissy uses concrete, decomposed granite,

Plantings in both cases are coastal, seasonal, and

indigenous. BBP has rugosa roses, hydrangeas, oak,
catalpa and beetlebung (or tupelo) trees.
Crissy boasts Monterey cypress, Canary Island palms,
beach strawberry and primrose, monkey flower, cow
parsnip, and bush lupine, to name just a few of the
parks more than 110 species of native beach and
marsh plants.
While BBP, with its six piers, reaches out
perpendicularly into the New York Harbor, Crissys tidal
lagoon, set behind the beach and dunes, penetrates the
site perpendicularly--each intervention providing a tidal
registry and habitat for unexpected wildlife.