MANAGING CHANGE: QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK SIGNIFICANCE STUDY Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: Valuing Landscape February 2021 3 MANAGING CHANGE: QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK SIGNIFICANCE STUDY FOREWORD More than ever before, the value of Value takes many forms and we urban parkland is in the spotlight. As have sought to recognise that in our we battle the Covid-19 pandemic, parks assessments. Using methodology well like Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park have respected in the Heritage sector, we played a crucial role for the communities have reviewed the Park’s socio-economic surrounding them. As well as offering a worth, its historic and aesthetic value, the source of fresh air and access to nature – ecological and natural capital values as well vital within urban environments – parks as the more traditional uplift to land values give local people space to exercise and brought by those key developments on the relax and provide a lifeline to support Park like Here East, IQL and East Bank. their physical and mental well-being. We have consulted with those who live, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as the work and use the Park on a daily basis such latest addition to London’s Great Estates, as the Park Panel and our volunteer Park also provides the chance to help London’s Champions as well as staff and contractors. economic recovery with its unique mix Continued dialogue helps us to manage of commercial business districts, housing change in significant areas to ensure developments and world-class sporting that the right balance is struck between venues set within wonderful parkland. development and conservation as the Park inevitably evolves over time. It will help All this highlights the vitally important ensure that changes enhance rather than role our policies on managing the Park detract from what is already here. have on shaping and protecting the area. We already have the Park Management This document is the start of a vital Plan, a Biodiversity Action Plan, a Natural conversation about the future management Capital Account and the Park Design Guide. of the Park. We encourage participation and This document aims to complete that suite contributions to that debate. of documents by starting a conversation about the value of the Park so that we can identify and agree which areas are special and significant and how best to protect them in the long-term. Rosanna Lawes Mark Camley Executive Director of Development Executive Director, Park Operations and Venues QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK: VALUING LANDSCAPE 1 MANAGING CHANGE:OLYMPIC QUEEN ELIZABETH PARK SIGNIFICANCE OLYMPIC PARKSTUDY SIGNIFICANCE STUDY 2 CONTENTS Executive summary: London's newest great estate 1. Managing change 9 2. Park significance 13 3. Summary of key signficances 15 3.1 Key significances 15 3.2 Table of landscape elements of key significance 18 3.3 Park significance plan 21 3.4 Areas of vulnerability 21 3.5 Listing and threats to the park's status 22 3.6 Informing future decisions and change 22 3.7 The pitfalls of ad hoc change 23 3.8 Updating the management plan 23 4. Values explained 25 4.1 Evidential value 25 4.2 Historical value 26 4.3 Aesthetic value 28 4.4 Communal value 41 4.5 Ecological and natural capital values 44 4.6 Strategic significance 46 This document has been prepared and checked in accordance with ISO 9001:2015 QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK: VALUING LANDSCAPE 3 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is Europe's most important new landscape for a generation. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: LONDON'S NEWEST GREAT ESTATE The London 2012 Summer Olympic and Today, the Park has double the green Paralympic Games were staged in Europe’s space made available for the Games. It has most important new landscape for a attracted developments such as International generation. It provided a wonderful setting Quarter London and Here East, that of restored rivers, waterways and wetlands, benefit from proximity to the parklands. lawns and meadows, known now as Queen Recognising the quality of the Park would Elizabeth Olympic Park. be acknowledged if it was granted protected status as a registered landscape. A landscape The Park was carved from an east London of this importance, which would be defined post-industrial environment. Vast swathes across the four London Boroughs, could be of contaminated land were remediated achieve this exceptional status before the and dozens of pylons removed. Landscape standard period of 30 years, providing it designers, city planners and engineers came meets the criteria. together to transform the place into a new piece of city. This document, read with the Park Management Plan, comes at a time when London used the Games to catalyse social, increasing urban density means the public economic and environmental regeneration. demand for high quality green space Biodiversity-driven landscape designs is growing. Magnified by the Covid-19 maximised the opportunities for a rich pandemic, the Park has been a centre of ecology. Concourse paving was minimised communal value and been able to respond so that the River Lea corridor could be by re-purposing facilities to provide support opened up, reconnecting the river with its to local communities. The services and surroundings and creating generous space benefits such space provides are understood, for wet woodlands and water meadows. but not always valued. The Park is one of the reasons that London This high demand coincides with serious 2012 lives on so strongly in the capital. budgetary constraint which presents a grave While it hosts iconic architecture such as risk. Commercial opportunities present the Lee Valley VeloPark and the London themselves as a funding solution, and it Aquatics Centre, from the very beginning the is possible to take advantage of them in parklands were a much-loved landmark in a way which does not over-compromise their own right. the quality of this nationally significant landscape. Understanding the significance London's Great Estates are the best example of the landscape is a way to enable this in of large tracts of land in the capital managed a considered way; linking to the commercial holistically through cycles of change and strategy and maintaining the Park Brand. renewal. It is time to see Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as London's newest Great Looking to the future, there will be Estate, giving a sense of place and natural significant change due to construction and capital benefits for the future residents regeneration activities. It is incumbent on and commercial developments. The Park landowners and land managers to have the deserves exactly this kind of well-tested vision and foresight to manage this change approach, rooted in a long-term vision to deliver the benefits envisaged. and stewardship and with deliberative investment, maintenance and management. QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK: VALUING LANDSCAPE 5 This document plays a part in the process and natural capital accounting, which puts of learning from the past whilst anticipating a monetary value on landscape benefits the future with fresh and rigorous thinking. including health and wellbeing, which translates as future savings for the NHS, shown in the Park's Natural Capital Account. Understanding landscape significance of the parklands (Park) The Park is a carefully composed landscape, shaped by a new aesthetic, a To retain the distinctive character of 21st century picturesque. This approach the Park, there has to be a rigorous created accessible looped walks around understanding of the value of its landscape the Park and views to the Olympic venues elements and qualities. Intrinsic to this is and across the river. The Park is a riverine how people use the Park and what it means park and the River Lea, as its main focus, to them. It is this understanding which is of the highest significance. Access to equips the park management with the tools and views of the river clearly need to be to inform decision-making in the short and considered and preserved. long term, not least in directing investment and future commercial decisions. The Park is one of the most biodiverse man-made landscapes in the UK. Any If the significance of those landscape jeopardy to this precious biodiversity is not elements is disregarded in decision-making, an option in the context of the twin crises then detrimental interventions could have of climate breakdown and loss of species a negative impact on visitor experience, and habitats. function, value and aesthetics of the Park. The Park hosted the world’s most Any intervention must add value to the successful and sustainable Games and Park's brand (which changes of over connections to that recent history. The icon time). Commercial income generating venues are key attractors to the Park and initiatives need to consider their impact are of architectural interest sitting within which may block key views, disrupt spatial the wider landscape. From iconic Art in composition, add visual clutter and attract the Park to the Fantasticology wildflower unmanageable crowds. Even what might meadows the parklands must be maintained appear to be minor interventions, such as and invested in. poorly placed signs or obtrusive commercial branding, can cumulatively have a powerful Connections to the area’s industrial effect which diminishes character. heritage must also be protected, including Carpenter’s Lock and The Blue Bridge. Any of these consequences would betray Post-Games additions, such as Tumbling the original fundamental purpose of the Bay and South Plaza, richly planted by the Park, which is to bring good opportunities internationally recognised designer Piet to people in east London. So, the Park Oudolf, are also highly prized. needs to continue to stay relevant and interesting while retaining the original design intent which is at the root of its Next steps include ... success.