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Beijing Olympics - Feast your eyes out - Five architectural wonders to see when you go

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Beijing’s Aug 2008 Olympics = lots of bragging rights and high visibility. China took this opportunity to go to town, and built some pretty insane buildings for the occasion.

Let’s take a tour -

“Bird’s Nest” – Beijing National Stadium

Photo says it all. This iconic stadium features an exterior of twisting and turning interlocking steel bars built like a – wait for it – birds nest bowl. It’s so unique in structure that the construction team had to invent a new kind of steel just for the job. Why’s that? Well Beijing has some pretty crazy geographical considerations. It gets pretty darn cold in the winter, brutally hot in the summer, is subject to crazy sandstorms, and is located in a seismically active region. That and given the fact that these bars are free-form in structure and need to support its own weight while it twists and turns and you’ve got what I dub “engineering fun times.”

Beijing’s goal is to make it a green Olympics (issues with air quality a separate debate), so the building ceilings are covered with a translucent material to let light in. It also features massive solar panels and rain collectors to irrigate the landscaping.

Some 91,000 spectators are expected to fill the stadium. While vast in size, Bird’s Nest is built to create as much of a sense of intimacy as is possible when you’re in a room with 90,999 other people. In an interview, an architect from the winning firm commented that no seat was more than a few hundred feet away from the action.  At that distance, it’s like I can touch the athletes.  Right.  Not quite.

“Water Cube” – National Aquatics Centre

Inspired by the geometric properties of water bubbles and its ability to take on angular forms, the National Aquatics Centre is giant cube-like structure made of steel pipes and bubblewrap. How giant and how much bubblewrap? At a 70,000 sq metres, it’s enough to lay claim to being the largest ETFE building in the world (a type of plasticky Teflon).

So why bubble wrap?

Well aside from looking all watery and cool, it helps the building keep with the green theme. This high tech building is able to harness 90% of the solar energy falling onto the building. It is funneled in to heat the pool and interior in the winter, but also strategically printed with differing patterns of printed dots to control the light penetration so you’re not put on broil in the summer. Here too, are built-in rain catchers to store water for the pools.

Watercube holds 17,000 spectators, and will be turned into a public aquatic centre after the Olympics.

“The Egg” – National Centre for Performing Arts

Though not technically for the Olympics, the National Centre for Performing Arts was part of a set of buildings that all came up around the same time. It’s crazy enough to be worth a mention. This egg shaped titanium and glass structure is surrounded by a massive artificial lake – made to look like an egg floating in water – or a sunny side up egg? You enter the theatre via a glass ceiling hallway that goes underneath the lake. Unfortunately though, with all that glass, this building isn’t so green. But then it’s not really part of the Olympics so maybe it’s ok.

Beijing Airport – Terminal 3

What would be the point of all these buildings if you didn’t have a way to cart in visitors to come and admire everything? Beijing’s new airport terminal 3 is built to accomplish just that. Not satisfied with any normal type of expansion, Terminal 3 is a whopping 986,000 square metres in size. To help you grasp what that means – know that it’s the largest terminal in the world. Heck, if this terminal were its own airport, it’d be the largest airport in the world. It’s bigger than all 5 terminals of London Heathrow combined.

In an attempt to make this airport more green, southeast oriented skylights let in lighting and also helps heat the terminal during the winter months.

The “Z” building – CCTV

I’m pretty sure the “Z” building – China Central Television Headquarters (CCTV) is one of those buildings that really helps bring out the fear of heights in a person. Comprising two slanted “L” shaped towers that are connected at the top and the bottom, the 54 storey structure is a gravity defying piece on track to “break every single building code in China.”  In order to withstand potential earthquakes in the region, the building is fitted with a diagrid system (diagnoal + grid) on the external faces.  This creates a tubular stucture that is able to withstand torsion and flexion of the whole building if the ground starts shaking.  This type of system usually also requires less steel = more environmental!  ;)  Cool stuff.

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So there you have it. Five new buildings to check out the next time you’re in Beijing.

p.s. If you’re interested in green stuff, check out our friends over at Huddler.