The development of the former rail land into East London’s mixed-use Stratford City played a key role in the city’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The development of the former rail land into East London’s mixed-use Stratford City played a key role in the city’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Arup designed the masterplan in conjunction with Fletcher Priest, West 8 and 20 other architectural practices. We brought together a diverse range of disciplines from infrastructure design, transport planning and project management, working in collaboration with developers and masterplanners to maximise the development potential and shape the landform while maintaining the outline planning approvals. Technical approvals for our work were obtained from Network Rail, High Speed 1 (CTRL), DLR, TfL, EA, ODA & London Borough of Newham.

Ten years on, it is delivering exactly the kind of anchor and legacy intended for communities. The masterplan has proved to be a highly resilient development framework over the decade. It has delivered a novel, high-quality and sustainable piece of city development within a dramatically changing urban context, becoming one of the most engaging places in London. Behind that transformation and legacy lies a careful balance of quality design, operation efficiency and development flexibility in the face of challenging economic conditions.

As part of the planning process, our environmental and masterplanning teams developed a set of site-wide sustainability strategies. These provided detailed guidance on issues such as energy, sustainable building design, waste, water, microclimate, air quality and ecology. This guidance was passed onto developers in the form of statutory regulations. We identified robust environmental mitigation strategies that still gave enough flexibility to allow for change and evolution over the 15–20 years of development. As part of our guidance, we created a panel that continues to review the development’s sustainability. It is gratifying to see that early measurements show carbon savings that exceed our initial goals.

“The project team faced a tricky site. With Stratford City acting as a gateway to the Olympic Park, they had to find inventive ways to transform the development’s infrastructure for the Games and accommodate thousands of spectators at the time. Designing the infrastructure for Stratford City was a unique project. With bare minimum on the site, our designers started from scratch. This mixed-used development has since translated the infrastructure opportunity into city making and has continued to evolve, delivering positive social outcomes for many people”

Malcolm Smith, Masterplanning and Urban Design Leader