30/03/2016 16:38Olympicopolis architects on their £1.3 billion vision for E20 | London Life | Lifestyle | London Evening Standard

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Building blocks: the Stratford Waterfront plan

Lifestyle › London Life

ROBERT BEVAN | Tuesday 8 March 2016 | 1 comment

Olympicopolis architects on their £1.3 billion vision for E20The Olympicopolis scheme will see outposts of the V&A, Sadler’s Wells and Washington DC’s Smithsonian line up alongside newuniversity campuses. The architects talk through their £1.3 billion vision for the Olympic Park

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Olympicopolis is an ugly name for a beautiful idea — thecreation of a museum and education complex at the southend of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The name derivesfrom Albertopolis — the nickname given to Prince Albert’sgrand vision for South Kensington in the wake of the GreatExhibition of 1851 that saw the building of grand edificesincluding the Natural History Museum, the Albert Hall and

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the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The 21st-century version for east London, in plans seen for the firsttime by the Standard, promises to deliver a string of architecturalpearls along Stratford Waterfront (fronting the River Lea just southof the stadium) that are of a scale and unity of conception not seenin London for generations. It will, in contrast to formal South Ken,see cultural institutions in brick and steel where the public will beencouraged to roam through perforated ground floors and alonglinking riverside terraces with outdoor performance andexhibition spaces.

Outposts of the V&A, Sadler’s Wells and Washington DC’smammoth Smithsonian museum complex will line up alongside anew home for the relocating UAL's 5,000 London College ofFashion students and 500 staff and two 30- to 40-storey residentialtowers. Around a nearby bend in the river a second campus forUniversity College London — UCL East — promises to embed its3,000 students and staff in the local community.

Dublin architects O’Donnell & Tuomey and London-based Allies &Morrison are shaping the £1.3 billion vision. The Government isproviding £141 million and the London Legacy DevelopmentCorporation and the Greater London Authority a further £198million. The institutions themselves and private sector funding willcontribute £789 million and a further £180 million is beingfundraised philanthropically. A planning application is expected bythe end of the year. O’Donnell & Tuomey is designing the V&A andSadler’s Wells, Allies & Morrison the flats, the fashion college andthe Smithsonian. A competition to design UCL East has just beenlaunched.

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How the development fits into the Olympic Park

Both practices are combining their talents with the landscapers onthe surrounding public realm that is an integral part of the vision.They have enviable pedigrees, most notably O’Donnell & Tuomey’swonderful perforated brick cliff at the Saw Swee Hock StudentCentre for the London School of Economics and the complexwarmth of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Allies & Morrison wasresponsible for enlivening the Festival Hall and the recent Rambertdance company building nearby.

And it is the South Bank rather more than South Ken that providesan approximate precursor, with its riverfront promenade, themultifunctional, free roaming foyer of the Festival Hall and thecohesive sweep of Brutalist culture boxes from the QueenElizabeth Hall to the National Theatre.

The Stratford Waterfront images show a suite of brick-cladcantilevering forms that form a familial cluster (details are far fromset) on a podium above the terraces. The V&A is closest to thebridge, flanked by Sadler’s Wells and UAL's London College ofFashion, with the Smithsonian jutting forward towards the water.

The area will be approached from the bridge from the WestfieldCentre (entrance through the gift shop?) and past the stadium.Further south, beyond the cultural precinct, is the InternationalQuarter — an office and commercial zone that includes the newheadquarters for Transport for London by Rogers Stirk Harbour +Partners.

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Bob Allies, architect Allies & Morrison with John Tuomey and Sheila 0'Donnell,architects from O'Donnell & Tuomey who are collaborating on the Olympicopolisproject

O’Donnell & Tuomey cite the towers enclosing New York’s CentralPark, pieces on a chessboard and the still life forms in the paintingsof Italian artist Giorgio Morandi as inspiration. “The effect is tomove the city closer to the stadium and the park,” says JohnTuomey, 61. “It will intensify the urban grain and make the stadiumand park feel more special.”

Sheila O’Donnell, 62, points out that the site is trickier to managethan first appears, with an 8m drop between the Westfield bridgeand the water: “We set up the idea of the podium, rampedpromenades, dips, pockets and places between the buildings forprogrammed and un-programmed spaces.”

People will be encouraged to take a shortcut though the V&A fromthe bridge to the waterfront, for example.

“Everything has two entrances so you can walk through at groundlevel,” adds Bob Allies, 63. “The assumption is that [stylistic]diversity is a good thing, but I’m interested in how the buildingscan be more like each other. Diversity is easy — unity is moredifficult.”

Close collaboration on the composition of the building forms isessential, says O’Donnell, “so it doesn’t end up as lots of differentthings on a tray”.

The shift to east London will also be marked by an emphasis onmaking as much as consuming culture — Sadler’s Wells, forexample, will incorporate a choreography school and hip hopacademy as well as a 600-seat theatre. The V&A East willemphasise design, architecture, art and performance and willencourage public participation. The new Design Museum openingin Kensington later this year will face stiff competition whenStratford Waterfront is completed at the end of the decade.

"Olympicopolis will intensify the urban grainand make the stadium and park feel morespecial"

While the buildings’ frontages will face south to the sun and theLea, their rears on Carpenters Road will also be lively, withconservation workshops and the like, akin to similar areas in NewYork’s Chelsea. O’Donnell is also a fan of the special character ofpockets of the West End where you come across the stage door of atheatre and a largely blank façade punctuated by small dressingroom windows. It’s part of the physical complexity and unexpectedpleasures of a metropolis.

Each institution will not only have its own architecturalindividuality within this brick-faced family photo but will formseparate elements of the podium so that each can be altered orredeveloped separately over time. A common failing of manycontemporary large developments is that they masquerade as

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More about: | Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

distinct buildings above ground but are conjoined megastructuresbelow, which are difficult to adapt over time.

All very promising — as long as the architects’ vision is notcompromised. The Olympic site’s history is patchy in this respect:witness the Athletes’ Village, which looks like something thrown upfor workers at a mobile phone factory in Guangzhou.

For Stratford Waterfront, the LLDC has the role of bothdevelopment promoter and planning authority and even thepresence of internal “Chinese walls” makes this a less thansatisfactory arrangement. But at least being a quasi-public bodyshould mean that the cultural precinct’s squares and terraces willeventually form part of a genuine public realm.

Now can we just do something about the awful Olympicopolisname, please?

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Andrew WoodBeautiful idea, ugly design, is that really the best design we canfind? Looks very blocky with no grace.

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