I must say, from an architectural point of view of London produces a depressing effect, especially after Beijing, with its luxurious stadiums. The main problem of the London Olympic projects: the strict dictates of government officials, which destroyed at the root all the attractive and spectacular elements of buildings. A modest budget has priority over the country’s prestige and beauty of the sports festival. Unofficial motto of the London Olympics, «Save!» As a result, most of the projects — a boring box.

Construction Panorama

Game Stadium-2012. Designed by Populous (HOK Sport), and was officially commissioned March 29. It took 1000 days to build and finished three months earlier, and 10m pounds less than expected.

Olympic Village. Faceless boxes. After the Olympics will turn out great social housing ;)

Olympic water sports center, the architect Zaha Hadid. Unlike other facilities, the construction of Hadid has been designed before London got the rights for the Olympics, so it was originally designed with a much larger scale. When it came to implementation, it became clear that the government intends to maximize savings. Therefore, the project repeatedly altered, Hadid was accused in exceeding the budget. As a result, the project has been made ​​cheaper, and the main victim of its main element - a wide, resembling a diamond in the plan of the roof. Now the "diamond" significantly narrowed, and from under it could be seen the huge temporary stands for 15 000 people.

The project of London media center was assigned to "Morrison & Eliza" in early 2008, and was ready - at the beginning of 2009. But the British Committee for Architecture and Construction CABE has called him "extremely weak" and requested revision of its RPS Group. The result did not satisfy them again, and the project returned to the original authors, who were engaged in its optimization, when the foundation work has already begun. As a result, the media center as it was similar to a suburban supermarket, and stayed. Fail.

Courts. In general, it is scary to watch(

Parking and Media-center.

In the center, the white box — a basketball stadium. This arena is the authorship of office «Wilkinson Eyre» will be the third largest building in the whole «Olympic Park» and one of the largest temporary structures in the history of the Olympic movement. The stadium, designed for 12 000 spectators during the Olympics and 10,000 during the Paralympic Games, will then be disassembled, and two thirds of its parts will be recycled or used again.

Strange scary building. Judging by the architecture, it was designed in 60s. Now they should be ashamed to build that.

Along the river will put the Olympic Gardens. According to the plan, 100 acres will be transformed into Europe's largest park, created for the last 150 years.

The entire area of ​​the park will be divided into two parts. In the northern environment will be created enabling environment for the habitat of various animals: otters, gray herons, song thrush, and many others. Flowering meadows and woods are interspersed with ponds, reed beds and swamps, which will be used for the natural filtration of rainwater before it hits the Olympic complex flows through the river Lee, a tributary of the Thames.

Olympic Velodrome.

One more temporary barrack.

Ken Shuttleworth’s «Make» workshop developed a draft handball arena. The design of the stadium is made as flexible as possible, so it can be converted into a multipurpose sports complex after 2012. Handball arena, as well as the main stadium of the Games (as well as — in some future revision of the project — and a water sports center), produces a painful impression.