Leabank Square Extremely Disappointed with Olympic Architects!!

Take a look at the picture above - you are going to be so sick of looking at it for the next couple of decades!!!

This is the best the Olympics could come up with as part of OUR legacy!!!!!

This is the reward we have been given for giving them OUR beloved green lung - Arena Fields!!!!

Thanks to everyone who has sent me comments, emails, letters, had chats in the gardens, etc! There is not a single resident of Arena Fields (nor Wick Village next door!!) who likes the design for the International Broadcast Centre & Main Press Centre!

Again - Hackney Wick has been dumped on by the Olympic Delivery Authority! We have always been seen as the poorest neighbour of the whole Olympic Park - and their attitude is that we should be grateful for anything we get.

Well - we had a perfectly beautiful green park in Arena Fields directly opposite us - and now we have two massive blocks of steel & glass instead. My children's lego creations have more imagination, beauty & practical use - than what Hackney Wick is going to get as a legacy!

I was at a meeting last week where a suit from the Olympics was telling us that the buildings 'will come alive' when the cladding is put on. Putting all your suggestions about living walls to him - he nearly passed out! Leabank Square - he's 'not sure' about living walls - but how about a nice greeny/greyee dappled metal finish?!

So - they took away Arena Fields - with our orchard & trees - and gave given us two massive glass & steel blocks - and won't even consider cladding them in beautiful green, living, growing plants?!

Some legacy!!!

Even CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment - who advise on well-designed buildings, places and spaces) said that:

"The architecture as shown is extremely weak, lacking real conviction as to how it could work in Transition and Legacy, and in the case of the IBC revealing a paucity of imagination and analysis which we find deeply disappointing.

In relation to specific buildings on the site, our greatest concern is the extraordinary banality of the IBC ‘mega structure’. In our view, it is simply not good enough as currently proposed. We would go so far as to say that its continued presence would blight rather than enhance the Olympic Legacy. We believe that a fundamental rethink needs to be undertaken in respect of the external appearance of this building. Otherwise the public might well ask why this sort of building, which has been removed from the Lower Lee Valley in order to create a vibrant new future, is being reinstated at a larger scale." (http://www.cabe.org.uk/design-review/ibc-mpc)

And guess who the Olympic Delivery Authority need to submit the plans to in order to get permission to carry this architectural monstrosity forward? Themselves!

That's right Leabank Square! The Olympics give themselves permission to build anything they want on our Arena Fields!

Hackney Council has no say. Boris Johnson has no say. Meg Hillier has no say (not that she ever does!). Gordon Brown has no say.

The Olympics decide what is best for us oiks across the canal to stare at for the next 50 years. And the picture above is the best they've come up with!