In 2005 construction began on an Aquatics Centre at Stratford in East London. It is due to be completed in 2011 by the firm Balfour Beatty. It will be an indoor facility with two 50 metre swimming pools and a 25 metre diving pool, and has been designed by architect Zaha Hadid. It will replace the pools at the Crystal Palace Sports Centre in South London as the British capital’s leading facility for aquatic sports.

The centre will be used for swimming, diving, synchronised swimming and water polo at the 2012 Summer Olympics. It will be located in the Olympic Park, close to the Olympic Stadium. During the games it will have a capacity of 20,000, which will be reduced to 3,500 afterwards.

On 1 December 2005 Hadid was instructed to revise her designs after a specification change led to a doubling of the £75 million estimated cost. The revised plans were unveiled on 27 November 2006. Although the same general design has been kept and will still be able to hold 20,000 spectators, the aquatics centre will now be much smaller and will cost much less than previously expected.

On 8 April 2008 it was reported that the center will cost about three times as was originally estimated, totaling about £242m. Cost increases were attributed to construction inflation and VAT increases, and also includes the estimated cost of converting the facility for public use after the Olympics. The capacity of the centre is now estimated to be about 17,500 and will contain two 50-metre swimming pools. The roof is slated to be 11,200 square feet, a reduction from the previously stated 35,000 square feet.

Despite the cost increases, the centre should stay within the total construction budget for the event, which is an estimated £6.09bn.

The preliminary rounds of the water polo will be held at a 5,000 seat pool at the University of East London’s Docklands campus. After the games this will be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere in the UK.

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