Olympic Building: The Bird's Nest
08-08-08. The Olympics are going to hit Beijing like a political sledgehammer. One thing the world can agree on, though, is that Beijing's Olympic buildings are stunning. The Bird's Nest and the Water Cube? They have no precedent. They are totally ground-breaking. You'll see.
It's a bit difficult to digest all that's there with a single shot, so take my hand and I'll lead you through it. There's a stadium in there. A 91,000-seat Olympic stadium. It's surrounded by steel, so much steel that it is officially the largest steel structure in the world. How much steel? Well, 36 kilometers of it (over 22 miles). Even more odd, that steel is a separate building from the stadium inside. Let's take a look.
The Bird's Nest
It's a bit difficult to digest all that's there with a single shot, so take my hand and I'll lead you through it. There's a stadium in there. A 91,000-seat Olympic stadium. It's surrounded by steel, so much steel that it is officially the largest steel structure in the world. How much steel? Well, 36 kilometers of it (over 22 miles). Even more odd, that steel is a separate building from the stadium inside. Let's take a look.
That steel weighs 45,000 metric tons making a shell that's 330 meters (1,082 ft) long, 220 meters (721 ft) wide and 69.2 meters (227 ft) tall. Again, the steel "nest" is not actually attached to the stadium inside. Why? As we've seen in the news lately, there are quite a few earthquakes in China, and that makes the construction process that much more difficult. It was necessary to keep them separate so it's earthquake-friendly. It's all very complicated.What's inside the nest? Well, a stadium.
Not a bad seat in the house, eh? The interior is made of concrete and it looks, from this view, like they have designed the impossible. Who is 'they," by the way? This design required an international team headed by Pritzker Prize winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, partnering with ArupSport and China Architecture Design & Research Group. The Chinese Olympic committee picked the design in 2002, embracing the non-traditional, modern design that really stands out in China. (It's a wave: Tall Building: CCTV and TVCC Towers in Media Park.)To make the construction more complicated, they made this building "environmentally safe." How? First, the stadium has a massive rainwater collection system it uses to water the field. Second, the design allows for natural air ventialtion, cooling the space. Air conditioning? Barely necessary. Finally, there are translucent films on the roof to keep rain out, but also to allow sunlight in. Perfect. Colored lights can be projected onto those screens creating sassiness.
What impresses me even more, is that this stadium only cost $500 million to make. They must have some illegal immigrants there, working for pennies on the dollar. No? Am I missing something?
Now, none of that steel is for design, it's all part of the support structure. You can imagine how complicated the construction was. Computer models were running dizzy, trying to keep the support structure, well... sound, and construction, well... sound, too. This is truly a ground-breaking building. Truly amazing. You can see the stairways are building into the "nest" part of the building. It just makes me dizzy.
Oh, and beneath the stadium? A shopping center and a four-star hotel. Now I can, officially, spend a full day here.After the Olympics, this will become Beijing's football team's (soccer team's) stadium
08-08-08. The Olympics are here, and they are here in style. HAWTaction [hot ak-shuh
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Wow, nice. Can't wait for the story on the venue with the swimming evens. It looks stunning on television.