For the first time in modern Games history, the permanent sports venues and parklands have been embedded within the urban fabric of emerging Legacy neighbourhoods and will play a lasting, integral role in the life of the local community. The tour explains the thought process behind the masterplan that is guiding the transformation of this post-industrial former floodplain from an idea on paper into a new metropolitan quarter of London, helping shift London’s centre of gravity eastwards.

Dozens of permanent bridges built specially for the Games and Legacy help link existing communities in east London to the new parklands, permanent venues and new communities centred around the park. The setting will also be home to an exciting mix of cultural and educational venues including new homes for the London College of Fashion and BBC Music.

Starting at the Timber Lodge Cafe, architects Allies and Morrison will explain the concepts that underpin the routes, open spaces and parkland that connect the new neighbourhoods to the surrounding communities. Tracing some of the most important achievements of the masterplan, such as linking Hackney and Leyton across the Lea Valley and beyond, and improving the river and canalside walks, the tour will provide insight into the urban design principles that have informed this remarkable 240 hectare redevelopment, which is anchored by the largest new public park in Europe built in the last 150 years.

Allies and Morrison with AECOM
Maccreanor Lavington
Witherford Watson Mann

The Olympic and Legacy Masterplans have transformed a post-industrial backwater into the largest park created in London in the past 150 years. New east-west connections and a pragmatic approach to venue design is allowing for new neighbourhoods with thousands of homes to take root. And the park will soon host the most significant collection of cultural and educational buildings to be built in Britain since the Victorian era.

In this film, Bob Allies (Partner of Allies and Morrison) leads a tour of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park - narrating the transformation of its waterways into accessible amenity at the centre of the reshaped landscape of the Lea Valley. The tour starts in the North Park showing the mature natural landscape, the permanent venues such as the Velodrome and the residential neighbourhoods that are being established along the edges of the park. The tour then moves to the South Park with it's metropolitan character and the new cultural and educational quarter of East Bank that is beginning to take shape.

Allies and Morrison had been involved in the planning and design of the site since 2003 as part of London's successful bid to host the Olympics and led the Legacy Communities Scheme masterplan with Aecom.

This film is part of a three part series, exploring the role of wellbeing and architecture around east London, kindly supported by Allies and Morrison and with thanks to the LLDC.