X

London's Olympic Park begins to take shape

Techies and construction crews are working around the clock to transform a muddy site in the borough of Newham into an Olympics venue fit for the 21st century
By Nick Heath, Contributor
olympicpark1.jpg
1 of 3 Nick Heath/ZDNET

Teams of techies and construction crews are working around the clock to transform this muddy construction site into an Olympics venue fit for the 21st century.

The Olympic Park in the London borough of Newham will be the hub of 2012 Games, which will rely on 900 servers and 8,000 computers to relay results of the athletic battles to the watching world.

Behind the multi-storey shopping centre, the Olympic Stadium is taking shape. It will seat 80,000 spectators during the Games and afterwards will be reduced to 25,000 seats, to ensure it remains easy to fill.

olympicpark2.jpg
2 of 3 Nick Heath/ZDNET

The Olympic Village will be based where the white cranes are in the background of this picture. Up to 16,000 athletes will live in village apartments, which after the event will be turned into community homes.

New primary and secondary schools for more than 1,400 pupils will also be built on the site, and after the Games both the housing and schools should benefit from the high-speed fibre links into Olympic Park.

BT recently revealed it is investing 640,000 man hours in building and testing the network infrastructure for the 2012 Olympics. Every second the network will carry 6GB of information — the equivalent of 6,000 novels every five seconds, according to BT.

olympicpark3.jpg
3 of 3 The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games

Here is the vision of what the Olympic Park site will look like when complete in 2012.

Atos Origin — the company leading the consortium of IT companies designing and building the 2012 Games' tech infrastructure — has already spent two years deploying networks and computer systems at the Olympic Park.

It provides a shared service desk for construction crews and Games organisers on the building site.

Atos Origin is also behind the access control system for the 350 to 500 suppliers that enter the park site each day.

Related Galleries

Holiday wallpaper for your phone: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, and winter scenes
Holiday lights in Central Park background

Related Galleries

Holiday wallpaper for your phone: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, and winter scenes

21 Photos
Winter backgrounds for your next virtual meeting
Wooden lodge in pine forest with heavy snow reflection on Lake O'hara at Yoho national park

Related Galleries

Winter backgrounds for your next virtual meeting

21 Photos
Holiday backgrounds for Zoom: Christmas cheer, New Year's Eve, Hanukkah and winter scenes
3D Rendering Christmas interior

Related Galleries

Holiday backgrounds for Zoom: Christmas cheer, New Year's Eve, Hanukkah and winter scenes

21 Photos
Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6: Electric vehicle extravaganza
img-8825

Related Galleries

Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6: Electric vehicle extravaganza

26 Photos
A weekend with Google's Chrome OS Flex
img-9792-2

Related Galleries

A weekend with Google's Chrome OS Flex

22 Photos
Cybersecurity flaws, customer experiences, smartphone losses, and more: ZDNet's research roundup
shutterstock-1024665187.jpg

Related Galleries

Cybersecurity flaws, customer experiences, smartphone losses, and more: ZDNet's research roundup

8 Photos
Inside a fake $20 '16TB external M.2 SSD'
Full of promises!

Related Galleries

Inside a fake $20 '16TB external M.2 SSD'

8 Photos