London Olympic Park Design Team Announced

Hargreaves Associates designed the Sydney Olympic Park, including the water feature at the northern end of the Olympic Plaza. The plaza terraces down to a 4.5-acre wetland created at the edge of Haslam’s Creek.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) announces London and Oxford-based LDA Design and the U.S. landscape architect firm Hargreaves Associates to design the London Olympic Park. Hargreaves and LDA Design will work with the London-based firms BBUK, Kinnear Landscape Architects, and Sarah Price Landscapes.

Hargreaves Associates ( www.hargreaves.com) has offered full services in landscape architecture, planning, and urban design for over 20 years and has offices in San Francisco, Cambridge, Mass., NYC and and London.

Early plans for London Olympic Park include replacing tarmac and asphalt areas with meadows, wetlands, orchards and lawns. One notable environmental plan calls for the park’s heat/power station to run on willow grown in the wetlands.

The park features will include a 120m-tall wind turbine, canoeing facilities, cricket pitches, climbing facilities and BMX parks. A “concert field” will be adjacent to the HOK-designed, 50,000-seat stadium.

Ricky Burdett, ODA chief adviser on architecture and urbanism, said he anticipates the LDA Design and Hargreaves team will make the most of the site’s existing natural features and water courses.

Don’t hold your breath, however. The park will not open until 2014.