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Primary Substation, 2012 Olympics

General description: The Primary Substation for the 2012 Olympics is a vital piece of infrastructure, helping to supply the new Olympic Park with electricity. The building will continue to provide this function beyond the life of the Olympic Games. Given its critical role it was the first completed building at the park. It is situated close to rail lines in the Kings Yard area of the site. The building itself houses three large transformers within a secure compound, not accessible to the general public, but has a significant visual presence on the site given its size; it is 70 metres long with a tower at each end, one rising 9 metres and the other to 16 metres. Its monolithic presence brings together 130,000 ebony coloured engineering bricks, variously arranged to provide protection and ventilation to the plant housed inside. As an unoccupied building and as a large substation the requirements placed upon the design do not mirror those of most built projects, perhaps typified by the lack of any requirement for windows but the necessity to provide blast protection. The development of the Olympic Park is a large and relatively new undertaking. It is also predominantly a ‘blank canvas’ in which a large swathe of land in East London has been procured for this sole purpose. As such it represents a relatively unique situation in a contemporary Western metropolis whereby so little existing built context exists and so much and so varied an urban fabric will be created in a very short space of time. Additionally, as an Olympic Park the site will assume two very different guises over the course of barely a decade; firstly for the event itself and then in the so-called Legacy mode.