Customer Reviews

The Architecture of London 2012 : Vision Design Legacy : An Official London 2012 Games Publication

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Visually interesting, architecturally ok, a coffee table book that should have been in hard back though. One of those reminders of a great event that you leave lieing around when guests come and you can say "I was there" or to grandkids etc.

Nice imagery and concise write ups on the area. As others have said though - it is a coffee table book and being softback it won't last long here with the amount of pick-up and flick through viewings or maybe that was the publisher's plan to get people to buy more copies?

With the eyes of the world on London this summer due to the olympics, this is a great book to discuss and describe the new buildings/stadium that have been built for the event. Seeing how Stratford has been transformed is a fascinating and a worthwhile read - worth reading just to get you up to speed about London 2012 and give you a useful few facts for your pub trivia.

This book is a mess - not helped by the misleading title. As I live in London, I am interested in its buildings, old and new, and had hoped that this book would give me what the title promises - a succinct look at each major building, with interiors and exteriors (including artists' impressions where necessary), with details of architect, concept and construction. Even a glance at the index makes the heart sink - each building has references scattered throughout the book, none of them indicating what information can be found in each location. We do not have maps, so anyone unfamiliar with the area is lost from the start - the photographs don't help, many of them being more promo than anything else, and often given bland (ie useless) captions. It's reasonable, given the nature of the Olympic project, to expect top-and-tailing of overall intentions and 'legacy' (or 'leftovers'), but here these subjects are included in the same disorganised jumble as everything else. So - if you want some nice pictures and souvenir-style text (designed to be skimmed, not read) then you might be prepared to accept this; if you really are interested in architecture, look elsewhere.

Wonderful book for anyone who is interested in the architecture of 2012 because its well written so it's not a boring book and it's also packed with stunning images and beautiful descriptions and quotes.

I had great hopes for this book and was delighted when Vine offered me a free copy. However having read it now I feel disappointed in the lack of a few items everyone might expect to find in it.

I immediately looked for a map of the site, to see how it all related, or a sketch of what it would look like when we used our solitary pair of tickets to see the swimming, alas nothing. (The map that comes with the tickets is clear and simple and should have been included in the book.) Also there should have been a map showing the other Olympic locations and how they are disposed about London.

The drawings showing how the buildings specific to the Olympic Park have been designed, and the corresponding photos showing the end results are excellent, and lift the book out of the ordinary. These make it definitely worth a good look, but in themselves they are not enough.

The (double spaced) text is very informative as an introduction in outlining the original aims, the many goals successfully achieved, and the likely final expectations, but again one is left wanting much more detail. And to make it worse there is a lot of white space that could have been used to better effect with more info or bigger pictures. The book is too big for a pocket, but not big enough for a coffee-table.

Conclusion.
The book should have been a larger format; it needs some maps to tie it all together, the pics should be bigger and the text needs expanding. Then it would have been excellent.

Addendum 30th July 2012

Having been to the Olympic Park today to see the swimming I can confirm that the book tallies with what you see, but it is still a pale shadow of the reality.

Nothing on paper can quite convey the actuality of just how well done are the architecture, landscaping, planting, all the thousands of little details and nice touches that make the difference between good and truly brilliant.

The book is an introduction, and no more.

Although smaller then I expected this book is jam packed with pictures and informative text. (260 odd pages)
For those of us that are not going in person I can recommend this, it gives a good flavour of what it's like to be there.
It's things like this that become collectors items of the future, so look after it.

A fascinating collection of photographs of the varied structures erected for the 2012 games around the Stratford Olympic site. Recommended reading to all.

If you're watching the Olympics, you're no doubt impressed with the range of venues - the aquatic centre has been featured front and centre in the first week and shortly we'll be moving to the velodrome and the stadium itself (already seen in the brilliant opening ceremony).
This book is not only a great souvenir of the 30th Olympic games but a great testament to the many men and women, largely unsung (especially compared with Danny Boyle, Seb Coe etc) who drew up the often daring plans and then put them in to place.
The book tells the story but suffers from one big problem - it only goes up to the point before the games start. As a result there are no images of the venues in use. Now, you might say, that's obvious. How can you bring a book out in time for the Olympics and then criticise it for not featuring the Olypmics? Well I'm not criticising the book - just pointing out that it's like reading a novel that doesn't have the last chapter in it.
Architects are renowned for not visiting their creations after they've been handed over and used, and it would be great to see a new edition featuring people's responses to the buildings, how they fared, what they were like to sit in, and perform in...
And considering the main feature of the Olympic stadium and aquatic centres is their post-games life (both will look very different soon afterwards) it will be interesting to see how they fare.
My lack of 5-star rating is really for the size of the book. It's a handy-to-carry square size but that means the images are quite small. If anything demanded a bigger format, it was this book.
Well worth picking up and, who knows, a potential inspirer of designers and athletes alike.

This book was a lot smaller than I had imagined, but I found that was much better in the long run - especially when my little boy was so keen on reading it and looking at the pictures. I was also pleasantly surprised by the photographs - some beautiful shots of the Olympic buildings. I know this book is about now and the future - but I'd have been really interested to see photos of the areas 'before' the Olympic building commenced.

This is a delightful little book - and will be a great keepsake in years to come.

Wiley, one of the countries leading publishers of technical books (especially for architects) have branched out, with this title, to the tourist market. I expect the book will get a good showing in the Olympic complex as well as bookshops elsewhere.

Because it's not aimed at their usual professional readers I thought the whole thing was bit of a compromise. The main problem is that the editorial production was taking place as the venues were still being constructed, for example: a photo of the unfinished Anish Kapoor Orbit; an aerial shot of the Stadium with the outside landscaping still being worked on. This is far from being a 'Book to Remember the 2012 London Olympics'. The look of the pages is rather bland and it was really a mistake to use the dreadful Olympic typeface for the chapter headings. The text has some interesting highlights here and there but it's basically as bland as the photos.

No doubt it will sell well enough to visitors as a reminder of the event but I was underwhelmed overall.