The Olympic and Paralympic Village is where the 16,000 participating athletes will be resting and relaxing in advance of the most important days of their lives, as well as being the building blocks of what will be affordable housing to 6,000 Londoners as East Village – with its newly created postcode E20 – once the Games are over. As a consequence, the fitout of the 2,818 units by Locog (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) has had to straddle a number of objectives.
Initially the obvious tasks involved specifying for athletes – something that included extendable beds for taller participants (sprinter Usain Bolt, for example, is 6ft 5in) and ensuring a relaxed space that will be conducive to a good night’s sleep. Tony Sainsbury, Locog’s Olympic Village manager, has said the aim was for ‘focused and low-key’ and Jonathan Edwards, triple-jump gold medalist at the 2000 Olympics, has guided the details of the fit-out.
‘A track is a track and a swimming pool is a swimming pool, but this is where the athletes will spend the majority of their time – it has the greatest possibility to impact their experience of the Games,’ said Edwards.
The accommodation ranges from 30 sq m studio apartments to 121 sq m five-bedroom properties. Many athletes will be sharing bedrooms – but with no more than two people in any one room, and only one person in bedrooms less than 12 sq m. The accommodation doesn’t have kitchen facilities – (the athletes are due to experience communal-style living in the shape of the Olympic Village Plaza).
The Paralympics will host 6,200 athletes, and 240 of the homes (eight per cent) have been designed for wheelchair use and each one of the homes is also 100 per cent compliant to the Habiteg wheelchair design guide. High street store Next was commissioned to supply the homewares, which include 22,000 pillows, 1,200 blankets and 28,000 duvets.
For the duration of the Games, the accommodation spaces are divided by temporary walls to create more bedrooms, but after the Games have finished these will be removed for long-term living, and kitchens will be added for East Village to enter into its post-Games legacy period.
