London Olympic Village

When it opens this summer a series of cuboid blocks of eight to 12 storeys, clad in prefabricated concrete panels, laid out on a rigid rectangular grid, will become home to 17,000 athletes, and after that transform into 1,400 affordable homes and another 1,400 for profit.

‘The development seeks to emulate the much-loved planning of Maida Vale and other parts of Victorian west London,’ writes Rowan Moore, ‘where the interiors of blocks are given over to gardens shared by residents.’

‘Around the bottom of the blocks are bands of what are called “town houses” – three-storey units with further floors of flats stacked on top of them.’

‘It has to be said that the look of the village is a tad forbidding, not indeed very villagey at all.’