First-hand insights into Lee Valley Regional Park‘s sports venues

A full house of almost 50 architects, designers, operators, engineers and consultants toured Lee Valley VeloPark, Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, Lee Valley Ice Centre and Lee Valley Athletics Centre to share Lee Valley Regional Park Authority’s experience of successfully blending community activation, major events and commercial approaches.

Tour host Shaun Dawson – who is the Park Authority’s chief executive and IAKS UK & Ireland working group lead – explained how the Authority was already on a mission to create a ‘zone of sporting excellence’ when London decided to bid for the 2012 Olympics with Lee Valley contributing vital land, expertise and worked-up plans for what would become legacy venues.

Shaun Dawson explained the importance of client-led design, the commercial focus required for venues which need to be as inclusive as possible, continual investment to keep them relevant, anticipating changes in customer demand, and building in flexibility by moving away from single sport centres.

Design team leaders shared insights to design approach

As well as touring all four venues and hearing from venue operating partner GLL and venue staff, the group was fortunate to have three of the original architect practices giving talks. This started with fascinating insights from Hopkins Architects’ Mike Taylor, the lead designer of Lee Valley VeloPark, who told the group how he drew inspiration for the velodrome from the bicycle ‘where everything is working incredibly hard and it's very, very efficient’ and the importance of having the post Games legacy use of the wider VeloPark in mind throughout the design process. 

Mike Hall from FaulknerBrowns, who led the Lee Valley Ice Centre design team, explained how the landscape context of this elegant venue was important and that it needed to connect up with the open space around it – something it’s been consistently lauded for.

Tim Denis from David Morley Architects designed Lee Valley Athletics Centre as ‘a box that reveals itself’ and met the challenge to make the building accessible to everyone.  His colleague Jennifer Juritz said that the engineering had to be hyper efficient with a lot of emphasis on both natural daylight and heat regulation through shading with an approach to energy efficiency which was ahead of its time.

As with all IAKS UK & Ireland events, networking and the exchange of ideas were central to the whole event.