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© ODA


© ODA


focus of global attention: “It’s great to have critical mass, and it’s great to have a significant day one. Doing it all in parallel, incredibly quickly, isn’t ideal. But it’s quite an incredible thing to have been a part of.” The change of plan doesn’t mean that the Stratford City


development suffered a false start. On the contrary, it means that ‘London’s newest centre’, a 73-hectare site in total, ini- tially providing 2,818 properties in 63 blocks, around 11 courtyard plots, will be ready for habitation a full seven years earlier than the projected notional 2020 completion date. By then, it will have already played a central part in the London 2012 Olympic Games. The 8- to 14-storey blocks will soon be fitted out with parti-


tions to define the spaces required during the Olympics: in ‘Games-mode’ there are no kitchens, and the blocks are tem- porarily interconnected. Later, the blocks will be retrofitted and remodelled as homes ready for domestic occupation in at the end of 2013.


“The UK is ahead here,” Kendall tells me. “A lot of our prede-


cessors have waited until after the games to deal with future of venues, but the legacy company is well established.” What the legacy represents is a huge boost for London’s


anaemic housing market: even in the pre-Olympic days, the plan was to provide a mix of one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom homes, and the projection is that more than 10,000 people will be housed there. To date 1,379 affordable homes have been sold on 999-year leaseholds to Triathlon Homes, an approved afford- able homes provider. A further 1,439 homes ‘pepper-potted’ throughout the development, are available for sale or rent. Outline planning consent to build another 2,000-2,500 on site has been granted. Though he’s modest about his own achievements, Kendall


seems in awe of the project: “You don’t normally get that trans- lation from masterplan to building at this scale in this country. Things are more often built at that colossal scale in China, or the Middle East, but for the UK this is quite phenomenal.”


...continued overleaf


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