While feats of athletic brilliance may be the main focus of cameras during the Beijing Olympics, the telegenic venues set to host the athletes will draw their own share of gasps.
The Games won’t be about sporting excellence alone as spectators will be mesmerised by the futuristic architectural wonders that have been built specifically for the Olympics
BEIJING: While feats of athletic brilliance may be the main focus of cameras during the Beijing Olympics, the telegenic venues set to host the athletes will draw their own share of gasps from admiring spectators.
Beijing’s Olympic construction boom has bequeathed an 800-year-old city with some of the world’s most futuristic architectural statements, potent symbols of a resurgent power’’s desire to showcase its development and mastery of technology.
“I think the venues show a new openness and tolerance among common Chinese people. They also show our amazing achievements,” said Zheng Fang, a Chinese architect who worked on the acclaimed National Aquatics Centre, dubbed the “Water Cube” for its shape and bubbly facade.
The Olympic swimming venue competes with the adjacent National Stadium for the affections of thousands of camera-wielding tourists who flock to the main Olympic Green every day. The 91,000-seat National Stadium, known as the ‘Bird’s Nest’ for its lattice work of interwoven steel, has made such an impact as to displace Mao Zedong’s face from commemorative Olympic bank notes.
Standing together, the stadium and the swimming venue form “one of the most powerful urban precincts in the world,” said John Bilmon, a principal director with PTW.
While eye-catching and widely praised, Beijing’s new architectural marvels have also weathered a storm of criticism, from academics complaining of a developing country’s wastefulness, to environmental experts panning the venues for not living up to the “Green Olympics” pledge. Ai Weiwei, a design consultant for the “Bird’s Nest”, last year said he regretted that the stadium he helped inspire had become a symbol of a one-party state’s “fake” Olympic smile.
Other architects prefer to focus on the benefits derived from the global skills and technologies concentrated for the Olympic construction. Criticising China for wanting to showcase its development achievements is in any case misguided, said Tristram Carfrae, a structural engineer for Arup and the mastermind behind the Water Cube’s playful facade.
“If you look at Beijing’’s history of architecture and design as being about monumentalism, about the grand statement, then why should these sport venues be any
different?”
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