The countdown has begun to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. With construction well underway for Queen Elizabeth Park, the Stadium, the Basketball Arena, and the Velodrome, everyone is quick to note the remarkable transformation of Stratford, England. However, not everyone is focused on the Olympic Park Development as the site of the Olympics. Instead, the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), headed by Eleanor Fawcett, is focused on how the site will develop after the games depart. Fawcett is concerned with “how the OPLC can make a meaningful London place in the gaps between the Olympic venues.” This approach may be ill-conceived—I would hope that the committee would have worked with the planners of the Olympic Park to create a unified vision for the games and the transition of the space beyond the games. With all of the effort that goes into its development and what the OPLC considers to be “a new bit of city,” I would hope that it wouldn’t just be inserted into something that does not yet exist.

The project description involves a five neighborhood scheme: The first neighborhood, Chobham Manor, adjacent to the atheletes’ village, is slated to have “low-rise terraced houses, with mews houses behind them.” The other neighborhoods seem much less defined, although Marshgate Wharf will have primarily large apartment buildings that are intended to screen the large Westfield mall. Unfortunately, the project, as described, seems to be composed of disparate and unrelated components that lack connectivity, a wholistic vision, and an unified system. This could have been a great project, at the forefront of landscape urbanism, but unfortunately, it seems uninspired and like a typical suburban vision of landscape and community. I hope to be proven wrong.

Original article by Kieran Long, London Evening Standard:  Queen of the East: Olympics head of design shares her vision