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Fast-Tracked 2008 Olympic Games Landmarks Almost Done
Construction of the 2008 Olympic Games’ venues is being pushed so aggressively that the shells of the Olympic Stadium and National Swimming Centre buildings in Beijing are nearing completion. And the International Sailing Centre in the coastal city of Qingdao, which opened earlier this year, has already hosted two international regattas.
There won’t be any of the eleventh-hour flap over finishing the Olympic Stadium, as there was in Athens in 2004. Sun Weide, a spokesperson for Beijing’s organizing committee, said in a recent interview that the Games’ 37 competition venues and 76 training venues will be ready by the end of 2007—more than seven months before the Olympic torch is lit in the Chinese capital August 8, 2008.
With more than 600,000 visitors expected for the Games, most of them converging on Beijing, easing the desperately congested traffic flow is a top priority. Weide also reported that six roads have been constructed, while 25 more, plus four new subway lines, are underway.
The new roads and subways will facilitate access to the Games’ centerpiece, the 100,000-seat National Stadium, where the Games will ceremonially start and finish, with track and field events in between. The steel superstructure of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed “bird’s nest†stadium is virtually completed; gaps among the members of what appears to be a roller coaster from hell will now be filled with inflated ETFE cushions. ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) is a Teflon-like material said to feature high corrosion resistance and strength over a wide temperature range [See “2008 Beijing Olympics†story, March 2004 Architectural Record, p. 100] .
ETFE also will be used to enclose the neighboring 70,000-square-meter National Swimming Centre, more informally known as the Watercube. Designed by Sydney-based PTW Architects, the organic-looking, various-sized shapes are crystallized in a massive rectangular form stretched across a simple steel space-frame internal structure.
Andrew Frost, a PTW director, says the “elemental shape is specifically designed to work in harmony with the circular main stadium†and will be used before and after the games as a multi-purpose leisure and elite swimming centre. The design “appears random and playful like a natural system, yet is mathematically very rigorous and repetitious. The transparency of water, with the mystery of the bubble system, engages those both inside and out of the structure to consider their own experiences with water.â€
The swimming facility will house 17,000 spectators and should be completed by year’s end. Ordinarily, a swimming facility would need a fair bit of heating, but the absence of such a system has also contributed to the speed of construction. Kenneth Ma, an Arup mechanical engineer working on the project, attributes this fact to the EFTE cladding, which he says creates a very efficient greenhouse: “Ninety percent of the solar energy falling on the building [is] trapped within the structural zone and heats the pools and interior area†during the city’s bitterly cold winters, he explains.
Fast-Tracked 2008 Olympic Games Landmarks Almost Done
Construction of the 2008 Olympic Games’ venues is being pushed so aggressively that the shells of the Olympic Stadium and National Swimming Centre buildings in Beijing are nearing completion. And the International Sailing Centre in the coastal city of Qingdao, which opened earlier this year, has already hosted two international regattas.
There won’t be any of the eleventh-hour flap over finishing the Olympic Stadium, as there was in Athens in 2004. Sun Weide, a spokesperson for Beijing’s organizing committee, said in a recent interview that the Games’ 37 competition venues and 76 training venues will be ready by the end of 2007—more than seven months before the Olympic torch is lit in the Chinese capital August 8, 2008.
With more than 600,000 visitors expected for the Games, most of them converging on Beijing, easing the desperately congested traffic flow is a top priority. Weide also reported that six roads have been constructed, while 25 more, plus four new subway lines, are underway.
The new roads and subways will facilitate access to the Games’ centerpiece, the 100,000-seat National Stadium, where the Games will ceremonially start and finish, with track and field events in between. The steel superstructure of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed “bird’s nest†stadium is virtually completed; gaps among the members of what appears to be a roller coaster from hell will now be filled with inflated ETFE cushions. ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) is a Teflon-like material said to feature high corrosion resistance and strength over a wide temperature range [See “2008 Beijing Olympics†story, March 2004 Architectural Record, p. 100] .
ETFE also will be used to enclose the neighboring 70,000-square-meter National Swimming Centre, more informally known as the Watercube. Designed by Sydney-based PTW Architects, the organic-looking, various-sized shapes are crystallized in a massive rectangular form stretched across a simple steel space-frame internal structure.
Andrew Frost, a PTW director, says the “elemental shape is specifically designed to work in harmony with the circular main stadium†and will be used before and after the games as a multi-purpose leisure and elite swimming centre. The design “appears random and playful like a natural system, yet is mathematically very rigorous and repetitious. The transparency of water, with the mystery of the bubble system, engages those both inside and out of the structure to consider their own experiences with water.â€
The swimming facility will house 17,000 spectators and should be completed by year’s end. Ordinarily, a swimming facility would need a fair bit of heating, but the absence of such a system has also contributed to the speed of construction. Kenneth Ma, an Arup mechanical engineer working on the project, attributes this fact to the EFTE cladding, which he says creates a very efficient greenhouse: “Ninety percent of the solar energy falling on the building [is] trapped within the structural zone and heats the pools and interior area†during the city’s bitterly cold winters, he explains.