2012 Summer Paralympics in the context of "London Aquatics Centre"

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is a sporting complex and public park in Stratford, Hackney Wick, Leyton and Bow, in east London. It was purpose-built for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, situated adjacent to the Stratford City development. It contains the Olympic stadium, now known as the London Stadium, and the Olympic swimming pool together with the athletes' Olympic Village and several other Olympic sporting venues and the London Olympics Media Centre. The park is overlooked by the ArcelorMittal Orbit, an observation tower and Britain's largest piece of public art.

It was simply called The Olympic Park during the Games but was later renamed to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II (though it is not an official Royal Park of London). The park occupies an area straddling four east London boroughs; Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest. Part of the park reopened in July 2013, while a large majority of the rest (including the Aquatics Centre, Velopark and Orbit observation tower) reopened in April 2014.

London Stadium (formerly and also known as the Olympic Stadium and the Stadium at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) is a multi-purpose outdoor stadium at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in the Stratford district of London. It is located in the Lower Lea Valley, 6 miles (10 km) east of central London. The stadium was constructed specifically for the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics, serving as the athletics venue and as the site of their opening and closing ceremonies. Following the Games, it was rebuilt for multi-purpose use and now serves primarily as the home of Premier League club West Ham United, who became anchor tenants from the 2016 season. UK athletics are the other tenants in the stadium and host a round of the IAAF Diamond League each year, known as the London Grand Prix, sometimes called the London Anniversary Games.

Land preparation for the stadium began in mid-2007, with the construction officially starting on 22 May 2008. The stadium held 80,000 people for the Olympics and the Paralympic games, before it was remodelled between 2013 and 2015 with 66,000 seats, but with capacity for football limited to 60,000 under the terms of the lease. The decision of what happened to the stadium post Olympics had to be run twice after the first process was delayed by legal cases and a complaint to the European Commission in regards to state aid. It was decided to run a second round of bidding for the stadium, this time keeping it in public ownership and seeking an anchor tenant instead of an owner.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit (often referred to as the Orbit Tower or its original name, Orbit) is a 114.5-metre (376-foot) sculpture and observation tower in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London. It is Britain's largest piece of public art, and is intended to be a permanent lasting legacy of London's hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, assisting in the post-Olympics regeneration of the Stratford area. Sited between London Stadium (formerly called the Olympic Stadium) and the Aquatics Centre, it allows visitors to view the whole Olympic Park from two observation platforms.

Orbit was designed by Turner Prize–winning artist Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond of Arup Group, an engineering firm. Announced on 31 March 2010, it was expected to be completed by December 2011. The project came about after Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell decided in 2008 that the Olympic Park needed "something extra". Designers were asked for ideas for an "Olympic tower" at least 100 metres (330 ft) high: Orbit was the unanimous choice from proposals considered by a nine-person advisory panel. Kapoor and Balmond believed that Orbit represented a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculpture and structural engineering, and that it combined both stability and instability in a work that visitors can engage with and experience via an incorporated spiral walkway. It has been both praised and criticised for its bold design, and has especially received criticism as a vanity project of questionable lasting use or merit as a public art project.

Lee Valley VeloPark is a cycling centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, England. It is owned and managed by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, and it was opened to the public in March 2014. The facility was one of the permanent venues for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Lee Valley VeloPark is at the northern end of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It has an indoor velodrome and a BMX racing track, which have been used for the Games, as well as a one-mile (1.6 km) road course and 5 miles (8 km) of mountain bike trails. The park replaces the Eastway Cycle Circuit demolished to make way for it. The facilities built for the Olympics were constructed between 2009 and 2011. The first event in the Velopark was the London round of the 2011 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup series.

The 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics venues were mostly located in the host city of London, though some other events required facilities located elsewhere. Venues outside London (and England) included Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. Between the successful bid and the Olympics and Paralympics themselves, several details and venues changed.

Aldridge is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall in the West Midlands, England. It was historically a village, which was part of Staffordshire until 1974. The town is three miles (five kilometres) from Brownhills, five miles (eight kilometres) from Walsall, six miles (ten kilometres) from Sutton Coldfield and seven miles (eleven kilometres) from Lichfield. The town is also the second-largest town in the Walsall Borough (by population, after Walsall).

Thomas Alexander Heatherwick, CBE RA RDI HonFREng (born 17 February 1970) is an English designer and the founder of London-based design practice Heatherwick Studio. He works with a team of about 250 architects, designers and entrepreneurs from his studio in King's Cross, London.

Heatherwick's projects, many of which have won design awards, include the UK pavilion at Expo 2010, the renovation of the Hong Kong Pacific Place, the Olympic cauldron for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, Vessel in New York City, and the New Routemaster bus. The Garden Bridge over the Thames in Central London was cancelled.

The 1935 Summer Deaflympics officially known as 4th International Games for the Deaf was an international multi-sport event that was held from 17 August 1935 to 24 August 1935. It was hosted by London, England, with events held at White City Stadium. It is the only parasport event to be held in the United Kingdom until the 2012 Summer Paralympics as part of the Paralympic Games.

The tournament saw the debut of an American team.