London 2012 Olympic Stadium, United Kingdom

On 13 October 2006, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) announced that the Team McAlpine consortium would be handling the designs and construction for the new 80,000-seater stadium in Stratford.

The team consists of construction firm Sir Robert McAlpine, sports architecture firm HOK Sport+venue+event headed by conceptual artist Peter Cook, UK-based services engineer Buro Happold, and consulting firm M-E Engineers – the same team who designed the Olympic stadium for the 2000 Sydney Games.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is overseeing the project. The stadium was originally billed at £280m when the budget was set in 2004, but costs have escalated to £469m ($1.04bn) due to the cost of VAT, inflation, legacy and earthworks. The final designs were unveiled in November 2007.

THE OLYMPIC SITE

The site for the project is three miles from central London at Marshgate Lane in Stratford on an island where the River Lea and the City Mill river meet in the Lea Valley.

Buildings are still being cleared from the area and about 600,000t of soil will be removed in the next few months. Demolition should be finished by the end of 2007.

Ground levels are uneven, so some areas have to be lowered by up to nine metres, and others raised by up to five metres to create a level field for the construction platform.

Construction is due to begin in April or May 2008 and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2011 at least six months before the opening ceremony in July 2012, so there will be time for test events before the Olympic and ParaOlympic Games begin. During this phase, two temporary bridges over the surrounding waterways will siphon off lorries from public roads and bridges, minimising disruption to residents.

THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC STADIUM

The stadium, which will be at the south of the Olympic Park and within walking distance of the Olympic village, is a pivotal venue, and the opening and closing ceremonies will take place there. There will be 80,000 seats; 55,000 of which can be dismantled after the games end in 2012 leaving a capacity of 25,000.

The venue will become a community stadium for athletics, rugby and lower-league football, with a permanent athletics track. There will also be a training, science and medicine centre.

The search is on for a tenant to occupy the grounds from 2013 onwards; West Ham United had been shortlisted, but it now looks unlikely that a Premiership football club will take up residence. Tessa Jowell, Olympics Minister says: "Once the Games are over this will then be translated into a stadium that will not only host grand prix athletics events and other national sport events but will also serve the communities of the boroughs."

The foundations of the stadium are being excavated out of the London clay to a depth of 20ft, and the steel structure will be erected on the concrete base. The 55,000 temporary seats on the upper bowl are supported on a scaffold-like structure which has led to criticism that the stadium will have a 'makeshift' or 'Lego'-style appearance. The remaining permanent seats are sunk into the ground giving spectators a close view of the action.

The cable-supported, fabric membrane roof is supported from a steel frame with a zigzag pattern which looks like an upside-down paper hat. It stretches 28m round the stadium, but because of restrictions on the budget, only covers about two-thirds of the seats, which means that about 26,000 spectators will be exposed. An open-weave fabric curtain round the roof acts as additional shelter.

A 65ft-high plastic wrap around the 1,000 yard circumference will be painted with a giant mural – partly sponsorship logos and partly artists’ designs of Olympic champions and the flags of participating countries.

OLYMPIC STADIUM FACILITIES

There is no kitchen within the stadium building itself, but restaurants, cafes and facilities for merchandising are contained in the 'pod village' – brightly coloured capsules arranged outside the stadium, inspired by the 'fan zones' at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The stadium island has spectator access from the park, an athletes' warm-up area and surfaces for track and field events. Domestic services at the nearby Stratford International station will start in 2009, and by 2012, spectators will be carried to the site via high-speed Javelin trains from St Pancras.