Stratford, London in the context of "London Velopark"

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.

The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012, were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England. Some events were held at stadiums in Glasgow, Scotland and Cardiff, Wales. The first event, the group stage in women's football, began on 25 July at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, followed by the opening ceremony on 27 July. There were 10,518 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) who participated in the 2012 Olympics.

Following a bid headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe and the then-London mayor Ken Livingstone, London was selected as the host city at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore on 6 July 2005, defeating bids from Moscow, New York City, Madrid, and Paris. London became the first city to host the modern Olympics three times, having previously hosted the Summer Games in 1908 and 1948. Construction for the Games involved considerable redevelopment, with an emphasis on sustainability. The main focus was a new 200-hectare (490-acre) Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site in Stratford, East London. The Games also used venues that already existed before the bid.

Leyton (/ˈleɪtən/ LAY-tən) is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the River Lea, to the west. The area includes New Spitalfields Market, Leyton Orient Football Club, as well as part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The town consists largely of terraced houses built between 1870 and 1910, interspersed with some modern housing estates. It is 6.2 miles (10 km) north-east of Charing Cross.

It was historically part of the ancient parish of Leyton St Mary in the Becontree hundred and part of the ancient county of Essex. The town expanded rapidly in the late 19th century, forming part of the conurbation of London and becoming a suburb, similar to much of south-west Essex. It became part of the Metropolitan Police District in 1839 and has been part of the London postal district since its inception in 1856. The parish became an urban district in 1894 and gained municipal borough status in 1926. In 1965, it merged with the neighbouring municipal boroughs of Walthamstow and Chingford to form the London Borough of Waltham Forest, a local government district of Greater London.

Stratford City is a mixed-use development project in Stratford, London, England, to the north of Stratford town centre. The main developers are the Westfield Group and Lendlease.

Stratford City is the name given to the urban community centred on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Based on Stratford Regional and Stratford International railway stations, it includes Stratford Cross, a joint venture between Lendlease and London and Continental Railways (LCR) to create a £2 billion commercial and residential development, the Westfield shopping centre, Chobham Academy, and the East Village, previously the athletes' village constructed by Lendlease for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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 London Aquatics Centre is an indoor facility with two 50-metre (164-foot) swimming pools and a 25-metre (82-foot) diving pool in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London. The centre, designed by architect Zaha Hadid as one of the main venues of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, was used for the swimming, diving and synchronised swimming events. After significant modification, the centre opened to the public in March 2014.

East Village is an area in Stratford, East London that was designed and constructed as the Olympic Village of the 2012 Summer Olympics and has been converted for use as a new residential district, complete with independent shops, bars and restaurants. The area was formerly contaminated waste land and industrial buildings to the north of Stratford town centre. More than 7,000 people now live in the area.

The district is part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, planning is overseen by London Legacy Development Corporation.

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.