New Work: The E20 Story
The London 2012 Olympics has been a very public success but behind it lies a less well-known story. Beginning in London’s Lower Lea Valley over thirty years ago, an intelligent piece of urban planning has not only helped to make the Olympics possible but is also going to turn the Olympic Park into a living neighbourhood after
the games.
The London Olympic Legacy Corporation approached Pentagram to communicate this urban planning story in the form of an exhibit. Rather than create an architectural scale model to portray the physicality of the final development, Daniel Weil created a narrative exhibit that made the intelligence of the planning
fully dimensional.
Weil’s exhibit is a chronoscope that uses its shape to tell a chronological narrative, from the planning process through to the Olympics and onwards to the future of the neighborhood. The exhibit overlays different narratives on top of a representational map to highlight different components of the development. The new river life, the new neighborhoods, the new public areas and the remaining Olympic facilities are all positioned at different heights above the map, finding their place in the landscape of the new neighbourhood.
The names of the neighborhood hang from acrylic pieces in the ceiling, and at the centre of the exhibit is the river, made from blue translucent acrylic, underlit, functioning as the main throughline of the story.
Weil worked with Naresh Ramchandani to create the verbal narrative of the exhibit which they named “The E20 Story,” based on the postcode of the new living piece of city that the planning and development will create.
The E20 Story is being exhibited for the first time in Hackney House on Shoreditch High Street, from 3rd -5th September 12-10pm. Entry is free.
