We have already told our readers about the main structures of the Olympic Park in the Stratford area in the east of the British capital.
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the main stadium of the Populous Bureau, the Zaha Hadid Aquatics Center, the Michael Hopkins Velodrome, and more modest, temporary structures: the Copper Box Handball Stadium of the Make workshop, the Wilkinson Air basketball arena.
Landscaping deserves a separate mention.
park (Hargreaves Associates), which immerses visitors in the past of the area - with flowering meadows, hills, rivers and marshes, mimicking the natural landscape.
Some of the temporary sports facilities are located in other parts of London - for example, on the parade ground of the Horse Guards (
beach volleyball arena) or next to the UNESCO-listed Greenwich Marine Hospital (equestrian arena).
Among the "Olympic" objects of transport infrastructure, the most spectacular is
Wilkinson Air cable car over the Thames.
But high quality has not become the privilege of the most important and largest structures. The Coca-Cola Pavilion in the Olympic Park (this company is one of the main sponsors of the Games) by architects Asif Khan and Pernilla Ohrstedt attracts attention both in design and execution.
The permeable object, especially impressive at night, uses motion and sound sensors to allow pedestrians passing through it to remix Coca-Cola's "Olympic anthem" "Anywhere in the world." The structure consists of 180 ETFE resin pillows illuminated by red and white LEDs.
Three buildings of Magma shooting ranges are very noticeable: on their facades are scattered multi-colored "suction cups" in which ventilation holes are hidden, and at ground level there are doors.
One of the Olympic buildings in the city is the “Paleys upon Pilers” pavilion by Studio Weave architects. It is located on Aldgate Street, where the city gate, the eastern entrance to the City, has stood since Roman times. It is in the east that the Olympic Park is located, so the pavilion marks the route there from central London. He also recalls the history of this place: in the 14th century. in a room above the Aldgate gate lived and worked the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the "fathers" of great English literature. The openwork painted structure of wood, raised above the ground on stilts, should remind both of the half-timbered architecture and the patterns on the margins of the manuscripts.
In the field of graphic design, the most successful contribution to the Olympic movement has been the Royal Mail series of stamps, the British Postal Authority, where competing athletes are linked to London's landmarks.
The attacking swordsman's epee continues the line of the Tower Bridge, the London Eye is converted to a bicycle, the athlete jumps from the tower parallel to the tower of the Bankside Power Station (now Tate Modern), and the runners outline the circle of the Olympic Stadium. Designed by Hat Trick Design.
The pearl of the Olympic series can be called the "bowl" of the Olympic flame, created by Thomas Heatherwick. It is not the first time that he has presented British design to the world: at Expo 2008 in Shanghai, his United Kingdom pavilion became the most popular. Now the "bowl" project, which was kept in secret, amazed the imagination of spectators at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Games. Resembling a complex inflorescence, it consists of 204 copper "petals" (according to the number of participating countries), placed on thin stainless steel stems.
After the Olympics, each of the national teams will take their petal with them (each of them is inscribed), and the "cup" will cease to exist. Thus, the designer wanted to show that the importance of the Games lies in the unity of participants from all over the world: each petal is modest in itself, but together they create an impressive spectacle.
