The practice focused on the temporary facilities for the Athletes Village, making use of standard modular components in an intelligent and considered manner, to create vibrant, humane places for athletes, officials and Olympic family to enjoy. Even though these are temporary structures, traditional urban design principles are used in the deployment of tents, cabins or WC modules. The design mediates between the scale of the existing 10-storey legacy apartment buildings and the single-storey temporary facilities to ensure that the temporary spaces are of a human scale. Standardised tent modules required a common approach to alignment and ridge orientation to ensure visual consistency to successfully tie together the disparate elements. Such moves incurs no additional cost, but exploit the inherent geometry of the structures to enhance appearance and spatial settings.
The 18,000m2 footprint of the Athletes’ Village temporary Main Dining facility required particularly careful consideration, since the operational requirements of feeding 5,000 athletes and 1,000 staff have at previous Games resulted in somewhat characterless, large-span structures.
Intelligent enhancements to the standard tent structure have been developed to not only create a more humane athlete environment, but to improve the tent’s environmental performance. The Flags of Nations are located to provide their ceremonial function, and line key routes, tying together the spaces fronting the Village Plaza and Main Dining facilities, and creating a permeable ‘edge’ to the open space fronting the Main Dining.
The practice provided overlay to sporting venues including Eton Manor and Hadleigh Farm, where swimming, tennis and mountain biking events took place through the three months of ‘games time’.