The Legacy of the Olympic Park on Urban Landscaping

The London 2012 Olympic Park, which has been officially renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is one of Europe’s most significant landscaping projects for over 150 years. The landscaping for the park created much-needed new parkland in addition to forming the centrepiece of the 2012 Olympic Games.

The legacy of the project has shown how a bigger vision for green infrastructure in a city like London can help to inspire regeneration and support other environmental markers such as meeting low carbon targets elsewhere too.

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park was the biggest urban park to be created in London since Victorian times, and it was a massive inspiration for those involved in work on regenerating other parts of east London. Since 2012, there are more new communities being planned and built, all of which offer housing, leisure and retail space for the area.

The park took more than four years to create, and the work included the demolition and then decontamination of over 2m tonnes of soil. From there, landscaped areas were created – a concourse, spectator lawns and individually landscaped areas like the London 2012 Gardens and Great British Garden. The Great British Garden was a feat in itself; it’s the largest wildflower meadow ever planted in the UK with more than 4,000 semi-mature trees.

The park certainly contributed to a change in public perception of what landscape architecture is. Not only did the park provide a place the UK could be proud of to showcase the Olympics but it also gave something back to the local community, a legacy that stretched further than the park itself which has gone on to influence a whole range of other landscape projects.

The long-term legacy of the Queen Elizabeth Park is a beautiful urban park which is rich in biodiversity and helps the community to reconnect with nature. This can only be a good thing; enhancing relaxation and mental wellbeing as well as giving people a place to go to improve their physical fitness and health.

The Olympic Park has a ‘Towards a 10-Year Landscape Management and Maintenance Plan’, which means that for every £1 the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) spent on venues, transport and infrastructure for the Olympic Games, 75p was spent on legacy.

Europe’s longest conveyor

A 6.2 km conveyor has been built in France for a French cement manufacturer. The conveyor belt, which is the longest in Europe, was installed in eastern France to help feed a cement plant, and was installed by Techmi, French experts in bulk handling, and their partners ContiTech.

The cement plant is owned by Vicat, in the small town of Montalieu. The owners were presented with a quandary – how could they transport limestone to the plant from the quarry when it was around 6.2km away from the plant? There needed to be a cost-effective solution, and Vicat embarked upon a project to develop a conveyor belt for the task.

Techmi won the project based on their successful quotation, and ContiTech were taken on as their strategic partners. ContiTech have many years of experience with conveyor belts which can negotiate bends and the company also produces high-quality eco-friendly products.

Requirements were tough, but the result has proved to be pretty impressive. The endless belt is in the region of 13km long and even does a twist and turn on the head and tail of the system to run parallel to the loaded belt on the return.

Based on a Techmi patent, concrete walls and a cover encase the entire conveyor, so that the system blends in with its surroundings. This also means that it’s possible for animals and vehicles to cross over safely.

ContiTech produced and delivered the belt within just five weeks. Thirteen 1km rolls, weighing 20 tonnes each, had to be shipped from Volos to Fos-sur-Mer (on the French Mediterranean coast) and then before being transported more than 360km to Montalieu, using heavy trucks.

Once the components reached Montalieu, the belt was assembled on-site.

“We did the job in two stages and spent a total of two months on location splicing the 13 sections of belt together in the middle of winter”, said Jan Poppe, head of field service international.

The 260-tonne conveyor belt is powered by three 250kW electric motors, and has been in use since mid-October. The belt transports limestone at a rate of up to 700 tonnes per hour in normal use – but at maximum capacity it can move as much as 1,000 tonnes per hour!

Putting the R in RAVENSCRAIG

Back in 2008, Cloburn was responsible for helping to create a modern work of art. We provided the aggregate to fill in the huge red letter R that was unveiled on the site of the old Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell, injecting some colour into the site and giving it a vibrant reminder of the old Ravenscraig corporate logo to look back on.

The massive red letter was a huge project in itself; it’s the size of 10 football pitches, and was originally created to be a part of the ongoing redevelopment of the area. It’s so big that it could even be seen on the London to Glasgow flight path! The installation took 2,000 tonnes of red aggregate from our quarry in Lanark, which was subsequently used in other construction projects on the site.

Murray Collins, of Capella Group said at the time: "The popularity of web-based satellite maps such as Google Earth has led to the growing phenomena of 'earth art' like the big 'r'." He added: "As well as demonstrating the ambition and confidence behind the redevelopment of the site, this project serves a serious purpose in signposting potential investors and partners towards Ravenscraig.

"There is nothing else like this in Scotland, which reflects the unique nature of the entire
Ravenscraig initiative."

Ravenscraig is still undergoing development, and is Scotland’s first new town in over 50 years. It’s also one of the largest urban regeneration projects in Europe. Once the project has been completed, the new town centre for Ravenscraig will feature around 1 million sq ft of retail, leisure, restaurant and community facilities in one of Scotland’s most accessible areas.

The ambitious regeneration of Ravenscraig has been contentious, but even so it’s expected to create 12,000 jobs and attract more than £1.2 billion of private sector investment over the next 15 - 20 years. To date, at least £200 million has been spent on the first phase of the regeneration with the creation of a brand new £30 million regional sports facility along with a new £70 million campus for Motherwell College and around 850 new houses.