Olympics 2008:The Olympic organising committee chairman, double Olympic 1,500 metres champion Sebastian Coe, described it as a "stadium for a completely new era that will be inspiring and have a lasting legacy".

Key to the design of the venue is that it must shrink from an 80,000-seat capacity venue during the Games to one of 25,000 seats afterwards.

It will then become a multi-purpose venue used for athletics and other sporting and community events, but no anchor tenant has yet been found.

Most of the stadium building will have a shelf life of one or two years, so the designers have created a fabric wrap around it using graphic colours, mosaics and Olympic-related images that can change.

Talks have begun with a firm that can turn this fabric into bags that can be sold after the Games.

The temporary seats are also set to be sold.

Finding a post-Games tenant is important.

West Ham were tipped as a possible, but the idea of them or any other FA Premiership club moving in has now been ruled out.

Details of the transition for the stadium after the Games are to be announced in the next few months.

The venue is being built on land dubbed by the designers Stadium Island, as three sides of it are surrounded by water.

The Olympic Flame will probably be on the northern end of the island and outside the stadium, but talks are still under way about its final siting.