With completion of construction, the fencing around the 11 mile perimeter of the site is now being replaced with wire mesh. London-based StudioSuperniche is developing an Olympic Legacy Toolkit, the beginning of a catalogue of temporary structures to be fabricated out of the blue plywood, designed to facilitate local occupation of the site post Olympics, activate the vacant plots and allow communities to reclaim the vast empty landscape as their own.
Focusing on the niche user-groups of London’s Lower Lea Valley – from bird-watchers to market stall-holders, allotment keepers to model boaters – this collection of urban furniture will populate the site in the wake of the games, offering a provisional set of tools to stimulate an evolutionary model of local participatory development.
The first of these structures, which will be unveiled on September 25, 2009 at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, is a two-story bird hide and wall of nesting boxes, responding to the enthusiastic culture of birdwatching in the Lea Valley. The structures will be exhibited at Parallel Cases, an exhibition that will take place as part of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam from September 26 to December 13, at the RDM Campus.
StudioSuperniche is a team made up of students Kieren Jones, Will Shannon, Ottilie Ventiroso, and Oliver Wainwright.
