Tuesday 10th October 2017
New Digital Interpretation in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
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In 2016/17 the Canal & River Trust renovated a unique double radial lock at Carpenters Road in the middle of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. The Park is crisscrossed by several canals, rivers and flood relief channels which reflect the area’s geography and previous land usage. Hotrod worked with the Trust to create a coherent narrative at Carpenters Road Lock that connected these waterways to the vanished industrial buildings, the iconic 2012 Olympic facilities and the still-in-construction post-Olympic developments of housing, education, retail and leisure districts.
Visitors can explore the waterways in the Park through graphic panels, a printed family trial leaflet and a smartphone web-app at www.crl.london. The online elements include extensive archive materials showing the old East End canals, oral histories about the local industries, and a self-guided audio trail that takes visitors on a walk through the history of Stratford from boggy marshland to emerging London district.
The use of combined graphic and digital elements allowed the project to tell a much richer and more engaging story, and to weave the canal story into the wider history of community, industry, local memory and London’s constant evolution.