Lord's Cricket Club

16:07 2012, Cricket Club, London, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Lord's Cricket Club, Olympics, Outside the Olympic Park, Paralympics No Comments

Lord's Cricket Club is one of the venues that were not Olympic Park bound and is situated in St John's Wood, London. It hosted the archery events and was used also in the Paralympics for archery as well. It is a big venue and is one of the biggest Cricket Grounds in the world. It was built in 1884 and was redeveloped and made more modern in 1999 for the Cricket world cup. It has a media centre that was designed by Jan Kaplický  and has won the famous RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architecture) award. It has the capacity of 28,000 and it's cost to build was 5 million pounds. It is now a home to Marylebone Cricket Club and the English International squad. It still serves as their home ground since 1814. 

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Eton Manor

15:56 2012, Eton Manor, London, London Olympics 2012, Olympic park, Paralympics No Comments

Eton Manor is another venue inside the Olympic Park in Strantford, London. This venue was used in Olympics and Paralympics. It hosted Wheelchair Tennis and housed temporary training pools for participants in aquatics events, including three 50m pools for swimmers, and smaller pools for synchronised swimmers and water polo competitors. It has a total venues capacity of 10,500 people and the biggest venue "The Central Court" has a capacity of 5,000. It was designed by Stanton Williams and is now owned by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authorities. It has attracted interest of a local Football Club Leyton Orient. After the Olympic games it will host the Hockey Men's and Women's world cup of 2015 or 2016.

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Olympic Village

20:35 2012, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Olympic park, Olympic Village, Olympics, Paralympics No Comments

The Olympic Village also know as East Village in Stratford, London. It is a place where all the athletes stay during the games and is going to be used as residential apartments. The project was kicked off in the early stages of 2008; however was slowed down by the economical crisis. The accommodation provided housing for 24,000 athletes and teams and low prise private apartments. There were many architects involved in the project such as Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, CF Møller, Denton Corker Marshall, dRMM, DSDHA, Glenn Howells Architects, Ian Simpson Architects, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Make, Niall McLaughlin Architects, Panter Hudspith Architects, Patel Taylor and Piercy Conner. The East Village will be converted into 2,818 apartments, with 1,379 taken on by Triathlon Homes as affordable housing. The rest will be sold to developers for private resale. However, the estimate of the rebuilding and redevelopement will take more or less 3 years.

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Basketball Arena

19:30 2012, Basketcall Arena, KSS Design Group, London, London Olympics 2012, Olympic park, Olympic venue, Olympics, Paralympics, Populous, Sinclair Knight Merz, Wilkinson Eyre No Comments

The Basketball Arena in the London Olympic park is the main venue where the basketball events underwent, the other venue that the basketball events were played is the North Greenwich Arena (0₂ Arena). It has the capacity of 12,000 seats. It was supposed to be used for multi events such as Volleyball and Fencing; however, the Volleyball was moved to a new venue in Earls Court Exhibition Centre and Fencing was moved to the ExCel Arena near the Royal Victoria Docks. It was started to be built in 2009 and was finished to the mid-2011. The arena was designed by Wilkinson Eyre architects and two other manor architectural companies KSS Design grounp and Sinclair Knight Merz. Overall the building took only 15 months to build. To the end of the Olympics and Paralympics the venue will be used as a market or transported to Brazil for the Rio De Janeiro 2016 Olympic games. However there are still speculations that the majority of the venue will be recycled. 

The 0₂ Arena

  The 0₂ Arena is in Greenwich Peninsula, London. It also hosted the Basketball events and was designed by Populous. It has the capacity of 20,000 seats and is one of the largest arenas in Europe. 

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Olympic Aquatics Centre

20:53 2012, Aquatic centre, Architecture, London, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Olympics, Paralympics, Zaha Hadid No Comments

The Olympic Aquatic centre is situated in Stratford, London; it is one of the main venues in the London Olympic park. It was used in both events Paralympics and Olympics. The venue could host 17,500 people and it has two main 50m swimming pools and a 25m diving pool. It was designed by Zaha Hadid the famous British-Iraqi architect that also designed the Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain. It was finished by late 2011 and was started in mid-2008. It costed 269 million pounds to construct and is now a part of the community. The pool will be converted into a leisure centre and a wave pool. The wings will be taken off and the capacity will shrink to 2,500.

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Olympic Stadium

20:21 2012, Architecture, London, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Olympic Stadium, Olympics, Paralympics No Comments

Image by Chris Boland 

The Olympic stadium is Stratford, London, and it was and is the heart of the Olympic and Paralympic games. The stadium was opened in 2011 and the official construction date of the stadium was in mid-2008. The architects that designed the Olympic stadium are the Populous. The capacity of the stadium is 80,000 seats may get smaller by 25,000 and hosted the field events ,Opening and Closing ceremonies. It was originally costed £486 million to construct. It was used as the venue for the Olympic and Paralympic games and is going to be used as 2017 World Championship in athletics. There are speculations that there is a biding war between Tottenham Hotspurs F.C and West Ham F.C. to get the stadium and make it their new home.

                       

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