Yudu - RIBA September 2011

Intelligence | Athletes’ Village

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1: Stratford International Station 2: East side Athletes’ Village 3: West side Athletes’ Village 4: Central park area 5: Chobham Academy 6: Velodrome

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be different. King explains that as a result of the initial precast work they had conducted on the first five Olympic plots, they had in a sense become locked into an aesthetic approach while pushing for as much richness as possible. That said, ‘We were aware that cost-wise we had to go for standardised frames’, although over 300 window types are used. But there were also logistical reasons: Rather than scaffolding, BLL wanted to fit panels by hoisting them up the facade and installing them from within the structure. Fixing details were standardised, with panels base-supported on stainless steel brackets and pinned back to the concrete frame at the top. With columns on the edge of slabs, facade cladding has to cantilever past them. Balcony construction was with one exception standardised – all hang off the main structure for instance, using the same hanging and thermal break detail. King explains that quality control was done by benchmarking, involving full-size mock-ups of all materials and panel samples. There was on-site certification, water tests and thermal tests at factories and on site. Panels were even deliberately damaged, to work out how to repair them on site.

Within the limitations, the architects have

all responded differently, especially in the way the town houses are differentiated from apartments. Haworth Tompkins is using Spanish Alsecca stone; Lifschutz Davidson, black engineering brick at lower levels and joint-free, self-cleaning Sto render. dRMM has storey-height terracotta panels extruded in Germany. Eric Parry has used hand-painted vitreous enamelled panels, while cynicism aside Niall McLaughlin made pre-cast panels derived from the frieze of the Elgin Marbles, to great effect. BLL did however, baulk at Piercy Conner plan for black concrete and bricks. BLL wanted different facade approaches both for aesthetic reasons and because it reduced reliance on any single technique or supplier. So how is the Athletes’ Village looking, a

year before the games? Its physical presence gives away its density, at least 187dw/ha. By comparison, London’s notorious 24ha Aylesbury Estate was 116dw/ha, and the new Elephant and Castle development replacing it will be 157dw/ha. Despite the different facades, yellow Portland stone predominates, and one wonders if Piercy Conner’s bold strategy to

counterpoint this should have been given more shrift. I feel the more successful are those that celebrate the scale of the buildings rather than apologetically try to break it down – in this regard, the top floors of the Panter Hudspith N07 block’s extremist stripped-back stone facades get my ‘off-plan purchase’ nomination. But as Jonathan Kendall explains as we leave the site, it is not so much the facades as what goes on behind them that is going to make or break this new residential district. Talks are ongoing with Newham council and RSL TriAthlon about how communities will be developed here to be sustainable, integrated and cohesive. Achieving that will affect the amount of buy-to-let and proportions of ‘market’ to social housing, something the future architect to the client Delancey and Qatari Diar, will have to consider. ‘Constructing the Village is merely the start,’

says Kendall pensively. ‘The real challenge comes in the long-term management of the whole residential district to maintain a viable, sustainable community.’ That’s no mean feat given the density, and in the light of recent riots, the strategies adopted here will have to be more than skin deep. n