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| Link to The Observer |
"The athletes' village
has been built to house the 17,000 competitors and officials in the
Olympic Games, after which it will become a new neighbourhood of about
1,400 affordable homes and another 1,400 for profit. Its success is
vital to London 2012's hopes of legacy: if it prospers, office blocks
are likely to rise around it, and dreams of regeneration – the
theoretical justification of the whole Olympic exercise – are more
likely to come true.
"Most housing [proposals] nowadays consists of expedient, opportunistic developments,
thrown up with minimal consideration for the larger area of which they
will be a part. [Of whom might he have been thinking?]
"... It has to be said that the look of the village is a tad
forbidding, not indeed very villagey at all. It consists of a series of
cuboid blocks of eight to 12 storeys, clad in prefabricated concrete
panels, laid out on a rigid rectangular grid. [Link to "Cllr Cornelius and his Cladding".]
"... All this construction – many billions worth of station, shopping and
housing – has been delivered in the past few years, with ... the close oversight of public planning authorities, yet
it does not feel like a work of unified intelligence. [Of whom might WE be thinking?]
"The
strengths and weaknesses of the athletes' village reflect the way it was
achieved. It started off, in the mid-90s, as a bold plan by the
developers Chelsfield for a 'new metropolitan centre', with homes, offices and shopping, which was drawn up over six years of
planning and consultation."
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