Qualla: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GrimsbyT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the Olympics built a park here, the Lower Lea Valley was an electrical landscape. Fifty-two pylons up to 65 metres high stood in and around the site, marching their cables across what was then a mix of brownfield and Hackney Marshes. To clear the way for construction, every one of them had to come down. The power was rerouted through new underground cable tunnels dug by Murphy. Then the soil itself was washed clean down to a human-health layer. Only then could the work begin on what would become Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, one of the largest new urban parks built in Western Europe in more than 150 years.

Image: GrimsbyT | CC BY-SA 4.0

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: Eighty Thousand Builders

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sunil060902, CC BY-SA 3.0. More than 80,000 workers were engaged on the construction of the park. CLM Delivery Partner - a joint venture of CH2M Hill, Laing O'Rourke, and Mace - managed the white space between the venue zones and the internal road network. The EDAW Consortium designed the park itself, with...

Image: Sunil060902 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: A Roman Village Underground

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0. While the soil was being cleaned and the pylons taken down, archaeologists found a Roman village beneath the future park. The Lower Lea Valley has always been edge-land - too marshy for stable settlement, useful for the things cities prefer to keep at the edges, but humanly impor...

Image: Sludge G | CC BY-SA 2.0

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: The Orbit and the Stadium

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond's ArcelorMittal Orbit - a twisting red steel observation tower that has become Britain's largest piece of public art - watches over the park from its centre. The London Stadium, now home to West Ham United Football Club after a long legal dispute in...

Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: ABBA Builds an Arena

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. In 2021, ABBA began construction of a purpose-built venue in the Olympic Park. Called the ABBA Arena, it opened in May 2022 to host ABBA Voyage - a motion-capture hologram concert residency in which digital avatars of the four members perform a setlist as their younger selves. Th...

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: East Bank

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most ambitious legacy of the 2012 Games may be East Bank, a GBP 1.1 billion cultural district under construction at the park. The Victoria and Albert Museum is opening V and A East in April 2026, under director Gus Casely-Hayford, with a programme aimed at younger and more di...

Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0