ExCeL Centre

16:02 2012, Boxing, Excel Centre, Fencing, Judo, London, London Olympics 2012, Olympics, Outside the Olympic Park No Comments

ExCeL (Exhibition Centre London)  London is one of the venues that is situated outside the Olympic Park and it was opened in 2000. It has a perimeter of 100-acre (0.40 km²). It hosted several events such as Fencing, Boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, Table Tennis, Weightlifting and Wrestling. The centre was built by Sir Robert McAlpine and first opened in November 2000 and was really expensive to build. It is now a very important exhibition centre in London and is one of the biggest exhibition and shopping venues all around the world. It has many visitors and has been bought by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company.

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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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The Velodrome

20:05 2012, Hopkins, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Olympic park, Olympic venue, Velodrome No Comments

The London Olympic VeloPark is a cycling venue that was used at the Olympics for Cycling-track such as Team sprint, Team pursuit, Sprint and Keiring. It started to get constructed in the beginning of 2009 and was finished in 2011 to host the first event 2011 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup series. It was designed by a British architects from Hopkins Architects that also designed Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre in Cambridge. It has the capacity of 6,000 seats and is the first Velodrome to have an incline in the track so that cyclist can make new records. The project itself costed 105 million pounds and is going to be used for public.As for the BMX track it is going to be redesigned and also used for the public. Total 10 gold medals were given out in the Velodrome. 

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Media Centre

19:20 2012, Allies and Morrison, London, London 2012, London Olympics 2012, Media Centre, Modernism, Olympic park, Olympics No Comments

The large construction Media centre in Stratford; East London, is one of the largest buildings in the Olympic park. It is a centre for international broadcasting of the games. It was especially built for the Olympics to make it comfortable for the broadcasters to access the Olympic venues. The building is 275m long and is a 24-hour media hub that caters over 20,000 broadcasters, photographers and print journalists facilitating broadcasts to more than half of the people on the earth. Allies and Morrison have designed the 355 million building. It is going to be converted into space for commercial space and maybe rebuilt to make space for over 900,000 square metres of business surface. However the future plans look uncertain as there were small funds given to go through with the project.

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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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Roman Thermae

13:20 Ancient Roman, Architecture, Baths, Roman, Roman Cities, Roman Thermae No Comments

In ancient Roman cities it was very important to have public baths where people used to go and socialize, play ball games and wash themselves. The baths were introduces to the public in the earlier stages of the first century BC and spread quickly around Europe and the Roman empire.

Most Roman cities had at least one, if not many, such buildings. Roman bath-houses were also provided for private villas, town houses, and forts (where Roman soldiers used to camp of build fortresses). They were supplied with water from an adjacent river or stream, or more normally, by an aqueduct a long channel that carried water to cities from rivers and mountains. When the water got to the baths it would be heated up in a boiler with wood that is where the name Thermae comes from the word thermos means hot in Greek

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Ancient Roman Temples

13:01 Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Roman, Roman Architecture, Roman Cities, Roman empire, Roman Temples, Temples No Comments

Roman Temples were usually associated with the Greek temple because the Roman period of architecture has developed most of the main factors and techniques that the Greeks have invented.

Ancient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. The reason to their construction was the Roman believe in the Roman and Greek Gods. The cella housed the cult where the Roman citizens used to do their religious practises. Behind the cella was a room or rooms used by temple attendants for storage of equipment and offerings.

The English word "temple" derives from Latin templum, which was originally not the building itself, but a sacred space surveyed and plotted ritually. 

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