lifeisland – Manor Garden Olympic Allotments

by David Mackay - architect for Barcelona’s Olympic Village and Port and co-author of the pre-Olympic masterplan for the Lower Lea Valley

The 2.5 km x 1 km.Olympic Box that lies between the A12 to the north and the A118 to the south, and stretches from one side to the other of the Lower Lea Valley is probably the most crowded Olympic Site in the history of the games. Included in this area is the private development of Stratford City over the former rail lands to be built around the cross-channel rail station. The Olympic Village itself is to be accommodated within 20 hectares, this should be compared to the athletes’ village and facilities in Barcelona spread over 80 hectares. The athletes’ village was only one of four separated Olympic villages for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

No doubt in bowing to the Lords of the Olympics (IOC), that powerful world quango, the 2012 three week Olympic event will be a marvellous in-house and TV event. But, what about London?

Geographically the Lower Lea Valley is characterised by its river that meanders into several parts creating marshes and meadows likely to flood. Historically it was London’s defence on its eastern edge. The lower part from the Thames to the High Street between St Mary’s church and St John’s Stratford is tidal. The Lea Valley Regional Park Authority has for some time been concerned about the destruction of the river banks when hard edges destroy the natural profile together with high banks to protect the temporary industrial occupiers from floods. The more appropriate solution is to provide more surface for the water.

The cross channel rail link that crosses the Lea Valley has created an underground dam to the sub-surface water courses likely to cause a raising of the water table north of the tunnel and station. This water is uncontaminated and could be a useful element to provide new lakes and canals to combat the likelihood of floods.

The proposed Olympic structures within the Olympic Box are so dense that they are in several cases taken up against the meandering rivers so that raising the land level has become the response to likely flooding.

Information is sparse about the planning of the Olympic Box, probably for two reasons: security and that it has not yet been completely designed. However from the published diagrams, perspectives, etc. one has the impression that the LDA and ODA are expecting a great number of visitors during the games. From experience, in Barcelona, and watching other Olympic Games on TV, a full house is only experienced at the opening and closing shows. The stadiums are usually only half-full. Admittance charges are high and a better vision and more extensive information is available at home on the TV. On the street celebrations are more likely to attract popular enthusiasm. For this reason it appears that the width of the pedestrian promenades are over dimensioned, while the area around the Stadium appears mean (hence the number of bridges over the Lea river).

The fundamental flaw in the Olympic masterplan is that it responds to the Lords of the Olympics rather than to the opportunities that the site offers as a legacy for London.. In other words, the failure of landscape planning taking the lead role to respond to the existing legacy and providing for its upgrading to the benefits of East London. The scale of the opportunity has not been realised and there is a distinct danger that it will suffer, like Sydney, with the difficulty of trying to find a legacy and the finance after the damage has been done. Few Olympic Cities have cash left after the event to invest in this. The morning after the night before is generally a depressing moment.

Within the tight Olympic Box there is, we might say, “a fly in the ointment”. I can understand the distress this must give the planners at LDA. After all what is an allotment garden doing bang in the middle of this great celebration, but this has little to do with quality.

Let’s look first at the historic legacy.

Manor Gardens were bequeathed to the allotments in perpetuity by Right Hon Major Villiers nearly 100 years ago. Much nearer our time the Lea Valley Regional Park Plan (1999) referring to section 7 (Lea Valley Sports Centre) includes the statement of the necessity to “include retaining the allotments and protecting its edges”.

I personally remember in 1999 my surprise, when I climbed up the embankment from the Temple Mills cycle track, to find this piece of ordered urban agriculture enclosed within a ring of mature trees, like some symbolic evidence of the former productive area of pasture and market gardens that was the Lea Valley before it became London’s backyard.

Many years ago it was capped with vegetable soil and has since then continued its agricultural life giving material and social support to the communities on either side of the valley. Just a word about contamination. Our engineers when we were working on the former masterplan confirmed that the problems of contamination were generally exaggerated in public opinions and that it was not necessarily costly to correct. If the contamination of sites due for landscape purposes the criterion was to remove 1.5 m depth and replace with half a meter of clean material (50% reconditioned site material and 50% imported material). This is what we did for the parks areas of the Olympic Village in Barcelona. It is also likely to be 30% cheaper than land to be occupied by buildings. Removing 4 m deep, or adding it, as proposed for the allotments seems a poor excuse for destroying this otherwise sustainable urban agricultural land. Finally, as any farmer knows, constant attention to agriculture use enriches the earth; proof is that nobody seems to have suffered for nearly 100 years.

When the rough waters Olympic events took place in Seu d’Urgell in the Pyrenees the approach road ran through an existing area of urban agriculture (allotments). These were carefully preserved to support the reality of sustainable cities. I fail to see why London cannot cope with this reality.

If 2012 London Olympics claim to be green Olympics then this “fly in the ointment”, (which understandably upsets the neat arrangements of the planners and architects and security etc) should be historically preserved for history, for its social role and for us to believe that there will indeed be a legacy after the great event. I hope the bulldozers will not move on April 2nd.

David Mackay
February 2007

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