> Secrets of the Bird's Nest
> In a special feature on the architecture of the Beijing Olympics,
> Jonathan Glancey sneaks a look inside its signature building - the
> looping, swooping, stunning stadium
>
> "  Jonathan Glancey
> "  The Guardian,
> "  Monday February 11 2008http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/feb/11/architecture.china...
> When Sebastian Coe unveiled the design of the 2012 London Olympics
> stadium in November, you could have heard a pin drop. There was a
> breathless hush - and stifled yawns. Was this really it? The architect
> was smooth-talking, but as I looked around, the mood of photographers,
> cameramen and journalists said it all. It might well do the job, but
> its design seemed almost wilfully lacklustre.
> In dramatic contrast, the main stadium for this year's Beijing
> Olympics is, quite simply, stunning. Here is an adventure in steel and
> concrete, a building - despite its age-old purpose - like no other.
> Its structure is very nearly complete, while the fit-out, with its
> plethora of shops, restaurants, cafes, bars and meeting places, is
> racing ahead. At times, there have been as many as 7,000 construction
> workers on site, yet this is no rush job. It is a work of exceptional
> quality.
> If China has set out to impress the world with the 2008 Olympics, the
> stadium and its attendant buildings - the Aquatics Centre and Digital
> Beijing (the Olympics "command post") - have set a heady precedent.
> The furtive London Olympics, with its glum building site hidden behind
> what can only ever be known as the Great Wall of Stratford, will
> struggle to match the design standards set by the Chinese, although
> Zaha Hadid and her wave-like swimming pool offer a ray of hope for the
> London event.
> At the moment, although the Beijing stadium can be seen from the long
> avenues flanking the Olympic Park, access is barred to all but the
> most determined. Guards in thick green army coats and fur hats patrol
> the gate, while workers - from the far-flung provinces, mostly, and
> earning about £3 a day - troop in and out. Inside the compound where
> the stadium sits, its structure now complete, men stand on high-level
> walkways brandishing welding guns. Others balance precariously from
> the steelwork; at least 10 are said to have fallen and died here.
> An eye-catching design even from a distance, the stadium proves to be
> a mind-bogglingly complex artefact as you get up close, and it is just
> as dizzying on the inside. The Chinese named it the Bird's Nest as
> soon as its creators - Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, working
> with Arup and the China Architectural Design and Research Group -
> unveiled their design five years ago. It measures 320 metres by 297
> metres, and is 69 metres high. Its mesmeric steel frame, 41,875 tonnes
> in all, loops, swoops and swirls over and around the great, red,
> concrete 91,000-seat arena. What had seemed to be a solid structure
> from a distance proves to be a filigree Chinese puzzle close up.
> Jacques Herzog has described this 12-metre-deep frame as "an
> architectural forest", its beams, stairs, frames and other steel
> elements standing in for trees and branches, and providing an
> awe-inspiring transitional space between the exterior, the Olympic
> Park, and the interior, where the arena awaits. The latter, a great,
> red bowl of concrete, proves to be almost circular, so everyone is
> equally close to the running-jumping-vaulting action. This makes it
> just that bit different from other ambitious stadiums, such as
> Wembley, and it does feel that bit more of a piece, streamlined even.
> Above the tiers of plastic seats and confident-looking clocks, the
> roof is a simple membrane designed to keep out sun and storm (the
> Olympics take place in August, when Beijing is hot and thundery) and
> to act as a foil to that intricate steel skeleton.
> When the Games are over, the stadium will host sporting and cultural
> events, as well as rock concerts and those ineffable flag-waving
> parades so beloved of the Chinese. By then, the stadium will sit
> comfortably in landscaped gardens, also designed by Herzog & de
> Meuron, intended to be contemporary plays on traditional Chinese
> themes. If all goes to plan, the Olympic Park might yet turn out to be
> an Unforbidden City, a people's palace gardens of the future.
> Not everyone likes the Bird's Nest, though - least of all Beijing
> artist Ai Weiwei, whom Herzog & de Meuron persuaded to work on the
> design. Ai Weiwei, who once smashed a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty vase
> to make a decidedly iconoclastic point about Chinese art, and who, in
> 2000, curated a highly controversial art show in Shanghai entitled
> Fuck Off, was raised in a labour camp in Xinjiang province. In the
> 1950s, his father Ai Qing, one of China's most celebrated modern
> poets, was denounced as "an enemy of the state and a rightist". Ai
> Weiwei tends to speak his mind, even in a country that still frowns on
> free expression. He likens the 2008 Olympics to "a pretend smile" and,
> although he believes the stadium to be beautiful, he also calls it a
> "public relations sham" hiding the true political nature of China. His
> stance serves as a reminder that this global sporting event has not
> always gone hand-in-hand with polite politics and international
> camaraderie, however great its architecture and athletes.
> The Bird's Nest sits near the second of the major Beijing Olympic
> venues, the Water Cube; or, to give it its official name, the National
> Aquatics Centre. This magical structure - designed by Australian
> architects PTW with Arup, the Shenzen Design Institute and the China
> State Construction and Engineering Corporation - has just opened and
> is already hosting a Chinese swimming competition.
> In essence, the Water Cube is a big, £50m steel and concrete box
> containing a huge swimming pool flanked by 17,000 seats. But what an
> extraordinary box it is. The pattern of the structure has been
> designed to hold huge pillows of ETFE, a lightweight substitute for
> glass, the same inflated hi-tech material used to clad the domes of
> Cornwall's Eden Centre. The pattern is based on the natural formation
> of soap bubbles to give a random, organic appearance.
> It was clearly clever, not to mention fun, to make a big box into an
> architectural and engineering conjuring trick. Yet this is also a
> responsible design; the pillows heat up in the sun, and this in turn
> heats the water in the pool and feeds into the rest of the building.
> It is exceedingly efficient. In the evening, as an added bonus, the
> Water Cube glows a happy, swimming pool blue; it looks great from the
> street, one of those buildings you feel compelled to go and have a
> look at.
> The last of the three major Olympic buildings was designed by Zhu Pei,
> a Beijing architect trained in the US as well as China. This is
> Digital Beijing, the control and data centre for the Games, scheduled
> to become a museum and exhibition centre for digital design and
> technologies and, apparently, a communications hub for the city. Zhu's
> design, in stark contrast to the stadium, is a sequence of tall
> buildings that look, on first encounter, rather like upright 1960s IBM
> computers.
> What makes it a delight, as you get up close, is Zhu's creative use of
> unexpected materials. A special fibre he developed with a Chinese
> manufacturer will be used for floors in the building, and is ideally
> suited for the projection of ever-changing digital images. Equally,
> the material is strong enough to be used for sci-fi-style pedestrian
> bridges within the building. As for the oddly gleaming end walls of
> the pavilion, these are composed of aluminium sheets made to look,
> strangely, like stone. The technique was developed by a Chinese tin
> can manufacturer. Ingenious - and the result is delightful.
> Zhu is one of a number of Chinese architects who have been able to set
> up their own studios freely in recent years, and who are keen to
> invent and develop a modern Chinese architecture that plays with,
> rather than mimics, tradition, one that is as independent as it wishes
> to be from contemporary western practice. The great luxury Zhu has
> enjoyed with the Olympic project is time. Most modern Chinese
> architecture is raced up as fast and as cheaply as possible, leaving
> precious little time for original thought or craftsmanship. Yet the
> three major Olympic buildings have been almost five years in the
> making.
> And they are not just for the summer Games. Each has something to
> offer a new, specifically Chinese architecture that might yet emerge -
> against the political and economic odds - in the coming years. For
> this alone, each deserves a gold medal, though the spellbinding Bird's
> Nest deserves a special award of its own. The designs will be on show
> at the V&A's China Design Now exhibition, opening in London next
> month, but nothing quite prepares you for the reality. Herzog & de
> Meuron, along with an army of Chinese workers, have conjured a truly
> Olympian design.
> · China Design Now is at the V&A, London