To understand just how important the Beijing Olympics are to China, you have only to look at where the Olympic Green has been built. During Beijing's first building boom-six hundred years before the current one-the city was laid out symmetrically on either side of a north-south axis. As in Paris-where the Louvre lines up with the Tuileries, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Champs-lysees-Beijing's most symbolically important structures have fallen along the main axis.
In the center is the former imperial residence of the Forbidden City. North of this is the Jingshan, a park surrounding an artificial hill where the last Ming emperor is said to have hanged himself, and, beyond that, the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, which for centuries helped Beijing's inhabitants tell the time.
In 1958, when the Communists expanded Tiananmen Square, at the southern gate of the Forbidden City, they placed the Monument to the People's Heroes on the same axis, in the center of the square. Mao Zedong's mausoleum, also in the square, is on the axis, too. And now, spread over twenty-eight hundred acres at the opposite end of the axis, is Beijing's Olympic Green.
If Tiananmen Square is a monument to the Maoist policy of self-sufficiency, the Olympic Green, ten miles and fifty years away, is an architectural statement of intent every bit as clear-a testament to the global ambitions of the world's fastest-growing major economy.
The Message
At least two of the buildings on the Olympic Green-the National Stadium, by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and the National Aquatics Center, by the Australian firm PTW Architects-are as innovative as any architecture on the planet, marvels of imagination and engineering that few countries would have the nerve or the money to attempt.
The Chinese, right now, have plenty of both. These buildings, some of the most advanced in the world, are made possible partly by the presence of huge numbers of low-paid migrant workers. When I visited the stadium with Linxi Dong, the architect who heads Herzog and de Meuron's Beijing office, he told me that the construction crew for his project numbered nine thousand at its peak.
The National Stadium is already widely known by an apt nickname, the Bird's Nest. The concrete wall of the arena is wrapped with a latticework exterior of crisscrossing columns and beams, a tangle of twisting steel twigs. The lattice arcs upward and inward over the stadium's seats (there are ninety-one thousand), supporting a translucent roof and forming an oculus around the track.
The center of the roof, over the field, has been left open. The engineering required to keep all this metal in the air is highly sophisticated: the building may look like a huge steel sculpture, but most of the beams are structural, not decorative. The drama of the Bird's Nest is even more arresting than that of the Allianz Arena, the Munich soccer stadium, which Herzog and de Meuron sheathed entirely in billows of translucent plastic, in 2005.
Much of the spectacle derives from the interplay of the steel lattice and the concrete shell underneath. The outer wall of the concrete structure is painted bright red-one of the building's few overtly nationalistic touches-and when lit up at night it shines through the latticework, an enormous red egg glowing inside its nest.
On leaving, you experience the excitement of the knotted metal in a new way, looking out over Beijing through the wacky frame of the slanting columns.
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Next door to the Bird's Nest is the Aquatics Center, known as the Water Cube, a rectilinear building with a blue-gray exterior of translucent plastic pillows set in an irregular pattern intended to evoke bubbles. John Pauline, who is the head of the Beijing office of PTW Architects, told me that the design emerged from a desire to find a way of expressing the feeling of water.
"We started out with ripples and waves and steam," he said. "We basically looked at every state of water we could imagine. And then we hit on the idea of foam." Working with the engineering firm Arup, which also collaborated on the Bird's Nest, PTW developed cladding made of variously sized cells of ETFE, or ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a translucent plastic somewhat similar to Teflon.
Among architects, ETFE is the material of the moment-Herzog and de Meuron used it for the fa??ade of their Munich stadium and for the roof of the Bird's Nest-and it has many practical virtues. It weighs only one per cent as much as glass, transmits light more effectively, and is a better insulator, resulting in a thirty-per-cent saving in energy costs.
Furthermore, the pillows don't just evoke bubbles; they are bubbles, twin films of ETFE, eight one-thousandths of an inch thick, placed together to form a cell, which is then inflated.
The real achievement of the Water Cube is less its technical wizardry than the transformation of the faintly trite idea of a bubble building into a piece of elegant, enigmatic architecture. The architects decided that, to play off the oval shape of the Bird's Nest, the Aquatics Center would have to be square, and the constraint of straight lines seems to have insured that the bubble metaphor didn't get out of hand.
The Water Cube's walls suggest the soap foam on a shower door-or perhaps, since some of the bubbles are as much as twenty-four feet across, on the slide of a microscope. From the outside, the almost random arrangement of cells establishes a kind of correspondence with the irregular struts of the Bird's Nest.
When you are inside the main hall of the Water Cube, the pattern of cells above and the green-blue tinge of the pool give you the feeling of being under water yourself and looking up toward the surface.
Olympic History Review
Although China's burgeoning wealth owes much to its export industries, for the Olympics the country has been content to play the reverse role, buying the most futuristic architecture that the rest of the world has to offer, rather than showcasing native talent. The work of Chinese architects has largely been relegated to a jumble of functional but uninspiring buildings.
(There are thirty-one Olympic venues in all.) An important exception is Digital Beijing, a control center on the Olympic Green, designed by a Chinese firm, Studio Pei Zhu. Like the Water Cube, Digital Beijing steers dangerously close to a kitschy conceit. It consists of four narrow slabs set close together in parallel to resemble a row of microchips or, perhaps, hard drives.
Some of the walls have glass cutouts in a linear pattern clearly designed to evoke a circuit board-they light up green at night. Yet the finished building has a dignity that is surprising. This is due in part to Pei Zhu's choice of materials-the walls are clad in a sober grayish stone-and in part to the proportions of the four slabs, whose narrowness and lack of adornment give the building an austerity that is the opposite of kitsch.
Pei Zhu may be Chinese, but his building is thoroughly international in style. (He was educated at the University of California and has worked both in China and abroad.) Indeed, apart from the red of the Bird's Nest, there is little that is traditionally Chinese in any of the Olympic developments. The scale and ambition of the project is an unmistakable statement of national pride, yet China, strangely, has been content to make this statement using the vocabulary of the kind of international luxury-modernism that you might just as easily see in Dubai or SoHo or Stuttgart-dizzyingly complex computer-generated designs, gorgeously realized in fashionable materials.
The message seems clear: anything you can do, we can do better.
The first Olympic Games of the modern era, in 1896, were held in an ancient stadium in Athens that the Greeks refurbished for the occasion. The swimming events took place in the Aegean Sea. The next Olympics, in Paris in 1900, had no stadium at all. The track-and-field competitions were held on the streets of the city and on the grass of the Bois de Boulogne, which the French did not want to disfigure with a proper track. Swimmers were left to cope with the currents of the Seine.
The idea that cities could attract the Olympics by promising lavish facilities probably began after 1906, when the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius put an end to a plan to have the 1908 Games in Rome. The British saw Italy's misfortune as an opportunity and offered to build a stadium big enough to hold a hundred and fifty thousand people, in Shepherd's Bush, London.
The White City Stadium, as it was called, was the first stadium to be erected specifically for the Olympics. Soon, countries were openly vying with one another to host the Games. (What is the Olympic ideal, after all, but national rivalry dressed up as global amity?) The apogee of triumphalism was reached, notoriously, in Berlin, in 1936, when Hitler, who wasn't yet in power when the Games were awarded to the city, embraced the Olympics as the way to show off the might of the Nazi regime.
Architecture was as much a part of his vision as the gold medals, though his taste ran to the turgid and overblown. He tore down a perfectly good, barely used stadium, replaced it with the largest stadium in the world, and then built a hundred-and-thirty-acre Olympic Village, with a hundred and forty buildings laid out in the shape of a map of Germany.
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Since the Second World War, host countries have avoided such bombastic excess, but they have usually seen the Olympics as an opportunity to pin a gold medal on one or more of their leading architects. There was Pier Luigi Nervi's innovative, seemingly floating concrete dome on his stadium for the Rome Olympics, in 1960; Kenzo Tange's swooping, sculptural gymnasium for Tokyo, in 1964; Gunter Behnisch and Frei Otto's canopied stadium for Munich, in 1972.
For the Barcelona Olympics, in 1992, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was enlisted to build a communications tower that would serve as an Olympic symbol. Calatrava's angular, precarious-looking design, inspired by an arm holding the Olympic torch, established his world-wide reputation and remains one of the city's most visible structures.
But the Barcelona Olympics also marked a new approach to Olympic architecture, one that placed as much emphasis on the relationship between the city and its facilities as on the sports venues themselves. Barcelona used the Games as an occasion to redevelop its waterfront and design a series of new parks, fountains, and works of public art to attract tourists after the Games were over.
Since then, cities have been keen to use the Olympics to leverage other civic improvements, on the premise that if you're spending billions to refurbish a city you should at least invest in buildings that have long-term utility. That's why the legacy of the 1996 Olympics, in Atlanta, isn't any of the athletic buildings but a major new park and housing for athletes that became new dormitories for Georgia Tech.
The plan for the 2012 Olympics, in London, takes this idea a step further. Although there is one flashy commission for a British architect (an aquatics center, designed by Zaha Hadid, in the form of a giant wave), the London Olympics are distinctly short on architectural extravaganzas. The main stadium, to be designed by a large American firm that has had a lock on football and baseball stadiums for years, will be dull compared to the Bird's Nest.
When I talked to Ricky Burdett, a professor of architecture and urbanism at the London School of Economics, who is an adviser to the London Olympics, he told me that London did not feel the need to prove itself through spectacular works of Olympic architecture. "We had a big debate over whether we should build a new stadium at all," he said.
"We were much more interested in how an intervention on this scale will affect a city socially and culturally." The British government plans to invest roughly nineteen billion dollars in an Olympic site, in the East End of London. When the Olympics end, much of the area will become a park, and sales of private development sites around it are expected to enable the government to recoup much of its investment.
Burdett said, "London has always been poor in the east and rich in the west. The London Olympics can rebalance London."
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What message does it send?
Beijing, evidently, has other priorities. For all the sleek modernity of much of the construction, there's no mistaking the old-fashioned monumentalist approach behind it. This is an Olympics driven by image, not by sensitive urban planning. It's true that there has been a much needed and well-executed expansion of Beijing's subway system, but most of the impact of the Olympics has been cosmetic-the trees planted along the expressway to the airport, for example, or the cleanup of some of the roadways leading to the Olympic Green.
Bordering one stretch of congested elevated ring road, stone walls, like the ones surrounding the old Beijing hutongs, or alleyway neighborhoods, have been erected. But, with not much behind them, they are little more than a stage set-Potemkin hutongs designed to distract visitors from the fact that so many real hutongs are being demolished for high-rise construction.
In today's Beijing, forcible eviction is common, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced to make way for the Olympics. The brightness of the Olympic halo gives Beijing's relentless expansion a surface sheen, but it's only a distraction from the city's deeper planning problems, such as air and water pollution and overcrowding.
In general, the Chinese authorities have been less interested in solving these problems than in keeping the construction engine going at full throttle. Still, the Olympic site did require some planning and, in 2002, a competition was held to create a master plan. It attracted entries from ninety-six architects around the world, and was won by a Boston firm, Sasaki Associates.
Despite its straight-line connection to the Forbidden City, the Olympic Green lies in a district that, in recent years, has become a forest of undistinguished high-rise apartment buildings and commercial towers. (The site also includes a mundane athletic compound erected for the 1985 Asian Games, and these leftover structures are all being refurbished for the Olympics.
) Dennis Pieprz, the president of Sasaki, who was in charge of the scheme, explained to me that the firm struggled for a long time with the question of how to treat Beijing's axis. The Chinese tradition of aligning important public buildings created "a huge temptation to put the stadium right on the axis," he said.
"But we decided that in the twenty-first century we were beyond that, and that we should, instead, symbolize infinity, and the idea of the people in the center, not a building." So Sasaki placed the stadium just to the east of the axis and the Water Cube just to the west; the space directly on the axis was left open.
Pieprz told me that he felt that considering the long-term use of the site was essential. "We needed a plan that could accept other civic, cultural, recreational, and commercial uses, so the place would become a major destination," he said. Sasaki envisions the Olympic site as becoming a large park, with each of the major buildings taking on a public function.
The Bird's Nest will remain as the national stadium, its capacity reduced to a more practical eighty thousand by the removal of several tiers of seats; the Water Cube will lose almost two-thirds of its seventeen thousand seats, the upper tiers to be replaced by multipurpose rooms. "You are making a city, not a spatial extravaganza that will be interesting just for sixteen days," Pieprz said.
But, whatever the architects feel, it's not clear that the Chinese are really that interested in long-term uses. The focus is on August, and on confirming before the world Beijing's status as a modern, global city. However well the buildings are refitted afterward, it's hard to see how the Olympic park will relate to the rest of the city, beyond being a welcome piece of green space in an increasingly built-up, sprawling metropolis.
The success of what China has built for the Olympics will ultimately be measured not by how these buildings look during the Games but by the kind of change they bring about in the city. The billions of dollars spent on the Olympic site, after all, are only a fraction of the money that has been invested in construction in Beijing since the Games were awarded to the city, in 2001.
The city, however, has yet to build a public space as inventive as that of post-Olympics Barcelona, or to think of the impact of the Olympics in terms as sophisticated as pre-Olympics London. In both conception and execution, the best of Beijing's Olympic architecture is unimpeachably brilliant. But the development also exemplifies traits-the reckless embrace of the fashionable and the global, the authoritarian planning heedless of human cost-that are elsewhere denaturing, even destroying, the fabric of the city.
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New competition venues
National Indoor Stadium
Venue National Indoor StadiumLocation Olympic Green
Type New
Seats 18,000
Total land surface 80,900 sq m
Competitions Artistic Gymnastics, Trampolines, and Handball
Post-Games use The venue, one of the best sports facilities in Beijing, can be used for sports competition, cultural and entertaining purposes, and will serve as a multi-functional exercise center for local residents.
Groundbreaking date May 28, 2005
Located in the southern part of the Olympic Green, the National Indoor Stadium joins the group of landmark structures in the area, including the National Aquatics Center to the south and the National Convention Center to the north. The stadium consists of a main structure and a warm-up gym nearby and other outdoor facilities, with an overall building area of 80,900 square meters. The seating capacity of the National Indoor Stadium is 18,000. The outdoor landscaping and roadways occupy an area of 44,000 square meters.
The National Indoor Stadium will be the competition venue for the Olympic Artistic Gymnastics, Trampoline, and Handball competitions and the Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball competition.
Design
The roof of the National Indoor Stadium resembles an unfurled traditional Chinese folding fan and perfectly complements the flat roof of the neighboring National Aquatics Center to the south and the single bend of the National Conference Center. The Chinese say that a folding fan holds a treasure of cultural details; it is a component of Chinese culture. The building reflects the aesthetics of the traditional Chinese architecture combined with modern functional elements.
Structure
The National Indoor Stadium has the longest-spanning indoor, bi-directional truss string structural system in China at present. The steel roof truss of the National Indoor Stadium stretches 144 meters tall and 114 meters wide. The frame is composed of 14 steel beams weighing a total of 2,800 tons. The structure meets structural design standards in terms of aesthetics, safety and reliability in bearing weight, and cost. Due to the challenging nature of installing the steel roof truss, construction workers relied on nine robots to move and join the steel truss beams.
Green Olympics
The National Indoor Stadium embodies the concept of "Green Olympics" by taking full advantage of renewable energy resources through a water source heat pump system. The project has five water source heat pumps that will be used during the summer season to disperse heat in the spectator area during competitions. In the winter the water source heat pumps will provide heating during major competitions and provide everyday heating and water heating for the stadium.
To meet summer air conditioning demands and with consideration to the venue's post-Games functions, the stadium takes advantage of natural ventilations and natural lighting. Both athletes and spectators can enjoy a comfortable indoor environment. In addition, the public area of the stadium uses water-permeable material to allow rainwater to seep into the ground. And rainwater collected on the rooftop will also be reused.
High-tech Olympics
Glass curtain wall with hidden solar photovoltaic system
A 19,000-sq-m glass curtain wall, made up of a visible frame glass curtain wall, a point support glass curtain wall, and aluminum glass, covers the National Indoor Stadium. All of the glass is Low-emissivity (Low-E) glass, which provides insulation and improves energy efficiency by reducing the transfer of heat through the glass. Low-E glass also acts as a filter for ultra-violet rays. Behind the glass curtain wall lies a hidden solar photovoltaic system that uses 1,124 solar panels, each measuring 120 cm X 50 cm. The solar panels have a peak power output of 90 watts.
Photovoltaic solar energy is a clean, renewable energy resource that has become an important development among the world's new energies. The solar panels absorb photons from sunlight and transport the photons to conversion equipment in an energy production control room in the stadium's basement. The equipment then converts the photons into energy and sends the electricity back to the grid system. The solar panels are able to produce 100 kilowatts of energy per day, which can be used to light the stadium during the day, reducing the stress on the state grid system.
Sound insulating qualities
To control noise, the National Indoor Stadium applies a 25-cm-thick, nine-layer multi-functional design that is rarely seen in China. The "sandwiched" layers are composed of cement planks, glass fiber, a waterproof layer, and sound-insulating materials, topped off with a sound-insulating outer coating. The resulting product minimizes the effect of noises from the outside and solves a problem faced by many of the Olympic venues - that of noise from falling rain.
Meanwhile, Low-E glass curtain walls combined with metal composite boards surround the stadium on all four sides. The glass curtain walls are made of double-layer glass, which not only provides heat insulation but also provides excellent sound insulation. And the stadium's air conditioning equipment is specially designed to contain noise. All these measures result in an environment free from excessive noise so spectators can simply enjoy the competition.
People's Olympics
Chairs: not only comfortable, but noiseless
The spectator seats were made-to-order specifically for the stadium, and the seats are not only comfortable but also noise-free so as not to interfere with the competitions. The seatbacks also have a special place for sponsor advertisements.
Wheelchair accessibility
The Olympic projects have adhered to the basic tenet of "people first" from the beginning. Project planning and design have borrowed from international standards and address the needs of various populations. With respect to the needs of people with a disability, a 300-sq-m wheelchair-accessible seating area that is able to accommodate 250-300 wheelchair users has been built on the north side of the stadium. In addition, spectators using wheelchairs can get to the seating area via a designated elevator.
Beijing Shooting Range Hall
Venue Beijing Shooting Range HallLocation Shijingshan District, Beijing
Type New
Total land surface 45,645 sq m
Permanent seats 2,170
Temporary seats 6,430
Competitions Qualifications and finals of 11 shooting events, consisting of all 10-meter, 25-meter, and 50-meter range shooting events. The shooting sport of the 2008 Paralympic Games will also be held in the venue.
Groundbreaking date July 13, 2004
Completion date July 28, 2007
The Beijing Shooting Range Hall is located outside the West Fifth Ring Road, Shijingshan District, Beijing. It will host the qualifying rounds and finals of eleven Shooting events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, consisting of all 10-meter, 25-meter, and 50-meter range shooting events. It will also likely be the venue of the first gold medal awarded at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The entire shooting sports events for the 2008 Summer Paralympics will also be held at this venue.
Capacity
Construction of the venue broke ground on July 13, 2004 and was completed in July 28, 2007. The venue, with a total surface area of 45,645 square meters, contains qualification competition halls, a final competition hall, a storehouse, a room for armed police use, a heating and ventilation equipment room, and an electric transformer room.
The qualification competition hall contains 10m, 25m, and 50m target ranges. The final competition hall contains sealed 10m, 25m, and 50m target ranges. The venue has a total seating capacity for 8,600 spectators, with 2,170 permanent seats and 6,430 removable seats. The qualification competition halls can seat 6.
100, and the final competition hall can seat 2,500.
Design
The Beijing Shooting Range Hall was designed to reflect the shape of a hunting bow. This design takes into consideration the origins of the sport of shooting - hunting in the forest. The Shooting Hall's qualification competition halls and the final competition hall are connected by the venue's main entrance, which contributes to the venue's "bow" shape.
Post-Games use
The venue will host important international and Chinese shooting competitions and will serve as the training base for the Chinese national team, as well as providing youth training grounds. Parts of the venue might be used as a national defense teaching facility. Additionally, the venue may be used to promote shooting as a sport to the public and to promote the Olympic spirit.
Green Olympics
The Olympic Beijing Shooting Range Hall's surrounding nightscape lighting includes Olympic-themed and colorful lighting fixtures lining the road around the venue, which serves to brighten the nightscape and contributes to safety. Using energy saving light sources along with high-efficiency lighting fixtures and control equipment, the nightscape lighting saves energy and minimizes pollution to the environment.
Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium
Venue Beijing Olympic Basketball GymnasiumLocation Wukesong Culture and Sports Center
Type New
Total land surface 63,000 sq m
Seats 18,000
Competitions Basketball
Post-Games use The stadium, which includes Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium, Wukesong Baseball Fields, and sports and commercial facilities, will be able to meet the needs of residents in western Beijing.
Groundbreaking date Mar. 29, 2005
Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium is part of the Wukesong Culture and Sports Center complex, which consists of the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium and Baseball Gymnasium as well as other facilities. It serves as the venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympic basketball preliminaries and finals.
Capacity
Located in the western part of Beijing, it covers 168,000 sq m with three floors underground and four floors aboveground. It can accommodate 18,000 spectators as they watch exhilarating games at the venue. Furthermore, all audience seats are upholstered for comfort and convenience. On the second floor, there are 45 luxury boxes, with 29 large ones and 16 small ones.
By adopting a rainwater recycling system, easy-to-clean glass and other technologies, the designers fully implemented the idea of "Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics, and People's Olympics" into the construction of Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium.
Green Olympics
The exterior of the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium is made of aluminum alloy boards and is capable of reflecting 80 percent of the heat generated by far-infrared. Compared to ordinary glass, the alloy boards can result in energy savings of 60 percent in the summer and 70 percent in the winter. The design of energy preservation and rainwater recycling system embody the concept of Green Olympics.
High-tech Olympics
To meet the demands of the Olympic Games and post-Games competitions, the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium has been equipped with a unique multi-color and high-definition LED display system. The three-component system, the first of its kind in China, includes a funnel-shaped 22-ton TV display with eight screens; a 270m-long display system around the stands; and a Games-time score and time control system.
The funnel-shaped screen device is a five-tier, 9m-tall lift, which can move to the best position for the spectators. Its screens can display text and graphical information, including real-time competition scenes, score and time reports, athletes' situations, and commercials.
The display system's specialty lies in its ability to capture intense, unique moments to be played-back on the big screen. With real-time synchronization, live information broadcasts, and space for advertising, the new system is able to meet the needs of Olympic basketball and NBA competitions.
Convenient transportation
Located on the extended Chang'an Street, the venue distinguishes itself from the other Olympic venues by reason of its convenient transportation. No matter where you are, be it on Chang'an Street or the fourth ring road, you can always get a clear image of the stadium. Various bus lines can take you to the venue, and there's no more than a 300 meters walk from the northeast exit to the Wukesong stop of No.1 subway line.
Laoshan Velodrome
Venue Laoshan VelodromeLocation Laoshan, Shijinshan District, Beijing
Type New
Total land surface 32,920 sq m
Seats 6,000
Competitions Cycling (track)
Groundbreaking date Oct. 30, 2004
Laoshan Velodrome is located close to the West Fifth Ring Road, across from Shijingshan Amusement Park in Shijingshan District, Beijing. It will host the track cycling venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. After the Games, it will become a training base for international teams, a venue for large-scale cycling competitions and a place to physically educate the younger generation, as well as to benefit the people in their fitness program.
Capacity
Occupying a land surface area of 33,320 square meters, the three-story building is 33.8 meters tall and capable of seating 6,000, with 3,000 permanent seats and 3,000 temporary seats.
Structure
The Laoshan velodrome has a lattice-framed steel structure, with a horizontal shadow spanning 133.06m, and 150m in diameter. The huge steel frame dome ceiling catches the eyes upon entering the venue. Looking up the dome, you might feel like the sky is supported by layers of steel. The dome is arch-shaped. Its steel frame extends from inside to outside like the annual rings of a tree. The length between the smallest ring to the biggest is 60 meters, with each ring connected by numerous steel frames.
To put 1,400 tones of steel structure in place, the engineers and workers displayed their "weaving" skills on and above ground. They set up two platforms on a 500m-long round steel rail to lift the beams and gradually expanded the surface on which the supportive structures are erected. At one juncture, it took four hours for 700 workers to use 64 capstan engines to put the dome's skeleton in place.
Facilities
A super skylight
At Laoshan Velodrome, a "super skylight" 56 meters in diameter rises 33 meters overhead. The skylight is fitted with double-layer polycarbonate panels to let in ample amounts of natural light into the building - enough to light the building for everyday purposes. The polycarbonate skylight also works to refract light.
This property will be extremely useful when Beijing's blazing sun will be shining at full capacity. Track cyclists competing at the velodrome will be cycling at speeds up to 85 km/h, so having the sun in their eyes could potentially be dangerous. But no stray light rays will be able to enter through the skylight, so cyclists won't have to worry.
In addition, the skylight can help ventilate the building. Up to 240 square meters of the skylight can open to let in fresh air. In case of a fire emergency, the skylight "windows" will automatically open to let out smoke.
Light fixtures
To adapt to the lighting needs of different parts of the arc track, the dome ceiling of Laoshan Velodrome are equipped with more than 230 light fixtures. Due to the fixed gradient of the velodrome (cycling track), with the outer lane being higher than the inner lane, every light fixture will emit a unique quality of light at a unique angle.
This will allow for consistency in lighting across the entire track. Track cyclists can reach speeds of up to 85 km/h, so any amount of sharp lighting could potentially be dangerous. Also, there are stringent indoor lighting requirements for television broadcasting, which calls for adequate and energy-saving lighting.
The 230 some light fixtures include eight kinds of lights. The "broadcasting" lighting mode call for all the lights to be on. Otherwise, one or a combination of the eight kinds of lights can be turned on for different purposes.
Wood-surface track
The Laoshan Velodrome track is 250 meters in length and 11 meters wide. The wood-surface track has a seven-meter race lane and a four-meter safety lane. The track is banked at between 13 degrees and 47 degrees, according to the standards set by Union Cycliste Internationale. The 250m-long cycle track lies on the floor, surrounded by rows of blue spectator chairs. The oval shaped track is China's first wood-surface track.
Large-capacity elevator
Laoshan Velodrome features large-capacity elevator. Apart from the Olympic Track Cycling competition, Laoshan Velodrome will also hold the Paralympic Track Cycling competition. The venue has a designated elevator to accommodate athletes with a disability. The wheelchair users will find a super-size lift in the velodrome, which is able not only to carry the Paralympic athletes, wheelchairs and assistants, but also an ambulance if demanded.
Convenient transportation
Laoshan Velodrome is easy to reach by car, subway, or bus. The venue is located on the west side of the cycling and fencing center of the State Administration of Sport. It is just 800 meters from the Bajiao Amusement Park stop of Beijing Subway Line 1 and can also be reached via numerous public bus routes.
Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
Venue Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing ParkLocation Mapo Village, Shunyi District, Beijing
Type New
Total land surface 31,850 sq m
Permanent seats 1,200
Temporary seats 25,800 (10,000 for standing seats)
Competitions Rowing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat-water and Slalom), Marathon Swimming
Groundbreaking date The first half year of 2005
Completion date July 28, 2007
The Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park is the new, purpose-built venue for the Rowing, Canoeing, and Kayaking and 10 kilometre marathon swimming events in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is located in Mapo Village in the Shunyi District in Beijing.During the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, 32 gold medals will be awarded at the venue.
Capacity
Construction of venue began during the first half of 2005. With a building area of 31,850 square meters, it occupies the largest surface area of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games venues. The venue has a seating capacity of 37,000, with 1,200 permanent seats and 25,800 temporary seats, including 10,000 standing room only seats.
The oxygen bar
The Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park is the world's only first-class rowing-canoeing venue that contains both flatwater and slalom courses. The water surface area of the Shunyi Rowing-Canoeing Park occupies 6.35 million square meters, and the green surface area occupies 5.8 million square meters, with green coverage of over 82 percent. Combined with the forestry of the surrounding areas, the rowing-canoeing park is a natural "oxygen bar."
After the Olympic Games, the venue will be converted into an attractive, world-class resort for swimming and recreation - the largest of its kind in the northeastern part of Beijing.
Convenient transportation
Of all the Olympic venues in Beijing, the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park is situated farthest away from the central Olympic area. To ensure that athletes will arrive at the Shunyi venue on time for competitions, and to ensure that spectators will also be able to get to the venues in a time efficient manner, Shunyi District has paved a new road - Baima Lu. The new road enables athletes to arrive at the venue within 30 minutes, and spectators with tickets can hop on a free shuttle bus from there.
Exiting on to Baima Lu from the Jing-Cheng Expressway, it would take only 16 minutes to reach the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park. From the Olympic Village, the Shunyi venue is only 20 minutes away by car. During the Olympic Games, Baima Lu will be a dedicated Olympic traffic route.
As is customary with Olympic venues, the rowing-canoeing park does not offer a parking area for private vehicles. Instead, four parking lots have been built in the park's surrounding areas. Each lot has an area of over 10,000 square meters, with the capacity to hold over 200 mid-size cars and over 100 small cars. From each of the parking lots, spectators can take one of 25 dedicated shuttle buses to the park.
China Agricultural University Gymnasium
Venue China Agricultural University GymnasiumLocation China Agricultural University (East Campus)
Type New
Total land surface 23,950 sq m
Permanent seats 6,000
Temporary seats 2,500
Use during Olympic Games Wrestling
Use for Paralympic Games Volleyball Sitting
Groundbreaking date Sep 15, 2005
Post-Games function The gym will have a warm-up court and spaces for various sport competitions and large-scale activities, such as badminton, table tennis, gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, handball and indoor football matches.
Located on the eastern campus of China Agricultural University, the China Agricultural University Gymnasium will hold the 2008 Beijing Olympic wrestling competitions and the volleyball seating competition during the Beijing Paralympic Games, which will be held from 6 to 18 September 2008. The venue is slated to be a multifunctional sport facility after the Games.
Capacity
Located in northwestern Beijing, the complex spans about 24,000 square meters and offers a seating capacity for 8,500 fans - 6,000 of which are permanent seats and the rest of 2,500 are moveable seats.
Facilities
The Gymnasium comprises a main hall with three mats for Olympic wrestling competition and training and rest areas in the auxiliary lobby available for the athletes during the Games. After the Games, the lobby will revive its original function as an indoor swimming pool. During the construction, the pool was backfilled with sand and will serve as an auxiliary lobby at the Games-time. So the Olympic wrestling athletes and the swimmers after the Games can use the water to take a bath as the teachers and students of the university do.
Upon entering the gym, one can see that panes of glass separate the roof's steps which can be automatically adjusted to allow for ventilation and to add natural lighting.
Skylights installed in each "step" of the step-like patterned rooftop let in a sufficient amount of natural light to provide lighting for daily practice inside the gymnasium, even on slightly overcast days. Over 400 skylights are scattered at different heights across the roof of the complex to let in light no matter where the sun is shining. This environmentally friendly lighting method will benefit the university for cost and energy saving.
Post-Games function
After the Games, the venue will serve as a multi-functional facility fully accessible to the university students and staff, as well as the residents in the neighborhood, hosting various indoor sports events such as badmontion, table tennis, gymnastics, volleyball, handball and indoor football. It may also facilitate the national squad for daily training.
Peking University Gymnasium
Venue Peking University Gymnasium (Table Tennis venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Location Peking University
Type New
Use during Olympic Games Table tennis
Use during Paralympic Games Table tennis
Floor area 26,900 sq m
Permanent seats 6,000
Temporary seats 2,000
Groundbreaking date Sep 17, 2005
Post-Games function The Gym can be utilized for a score of competitions, including table tennis, handball, basketball, badminton, and volleyball. The Gymnasium will also meet the needs of physical education, training and recreation.
Located on the campus of Peking University, the Peking University Gymnasium (PKG) stands west of North Zhongguancun Street and south of the Pacific Tower. It is not only a landmark within Peking University, it is also the world's first ever professional sports venue dedicated to table tennis, representing another great achievement in the progress of China's Olympic construction. The venue will hold the table tennis preliminaries and finals for the Beijing Olympics from August 8 to 20, 2008 and the Paralympics from September 9 to 17, 2008.
Capacity
Located in the southeastern part of the Peking University and covering an area of 26,900 square meters, the gymnasium includes a natatorium and is 122.6 meters long from south to north and 87.7 meters wide from east to west. The table tennis venue on the first floor is 47 meters long and 39.5 meters wide, has room for eight competition tables. It offers users outdoor activity space and a spacious indoor activity area. The venue will seat 8,000 spectators with 6,000 permanent seats and 2000 temporary ones.
Design
The venue is designed by the Architectural Design & Research Institute of Tongji University which won the bid in the design solicitation campaign. Its modest yet elegant appearance follows in the tradition of the architectural style of PKU's other buildings. Its roof resembles a table tennis ball between two hyperbolic surfaces, garnering it the name "China Ridge." The transparent spherical shape protrudes from the center of the rooftop, with two "wings" circumventing it - as if a table tennis ball ready to bounce off the roof.
The design principle represents the sprit of Chinese integrity, Chinese modern education, Chinese sports, and traditional Chinese architecture. By merging the beauty of the long-established ridge design with the principle of "spacing" in modern architecture, another great innovation in Chinese architecture has been achieved.
Green Olympics
To integrate the Green Olympics philosophy into the building, the PKG has emphasized energy saving throughout its design and construction process. The roof surface of the main competition area has adapted a siphonic roof drainage system, which is more architecturally space saving compared to conventional drainage systems.
The dual excavation of the building can naturally absorb sun power and reduce temperature through ventilation, thus reducing consumption of energy. The application of an intelligent water supply system reduces water usage by 10 percent, while still satisfying needs comfortably. A solar powered water heating system and ecologically friendly lighting technology have also been applied, emphasizing the principle of a Green Olympics.
High-tech Olympics
The venue is reputed for its "high tech content," especially in regards to the "Eight Technologies" highlighted by the idea of the "China Ridge:"
- Dual layer excavation structure
The PKG's excavation structure has one interior layer and one exterior layer. The audience hall and corridor walls have been built in brick. The corridor between the two layers can thus naturally absorb solar power and reduce temperatures through ventilation, thereby reducing energy consumption. - Design and construction of a pre-stressed steel structure
The PKG's steel roof structure has adapted a self-balancing, pre-stressing truss structured shell. Due to restrictions in the building's shape, the roof structure created a considerable amount of pressure for the bottom part of the facility. Because of the limitation of the construction site, the bottom structure had inadequate bracing capability. The most difficult part of the roof design was resolving the issue of reducing this pressure. After analyzing the situation in detail, the project management department adapted an earthquake resistant grille to unload the roof pressure, at the same time using pre-stressing tension cables to balance the strength of the roof. - Ground source heat pump air conditioning system
Two ground source heat pump air conditioning systems have been installed on the first floor of the PKG. The underground pipes are 75 meters under the north and south sides of the building, capable of providing 188KW/301KW and 120KW/192KW of heating/cooling, respectively. The antifreeze cooling water will be transported from these two circulating water pump units to the central system, thereby achieving with two units what was previously managed by four. This has reduced costs and energy needs. - Siphonic roof rainwater drainage system
A siphonic rainwater drainage system has been installed on the roof of the main competition site, while roofs on other sites have been complemented with pressure flow drainage systems. Rainwater absorbed by the siphonic system will recharge underground, while that retained by pressure flow systems will recharge above ground. - Solar power water heating system for natatorium
The rooftop of the PKG will be installed with solar panels, which will supply the preliminary heating of the pool water. This system allows the PKG to maximize solar power in order to save energy consumption. - Intelligent lighting system
An intelligent lighting system has been installed in its main competition area, the athletes' warm-up sections, and the indoor swimming pool, enabling swift lighting adjustments to suit changing conditions. - Integrated computer control system for transformer substations
PKG's main control system is connected with the building's BA system. In order to remotely and intelligently control the system, inspection modules have been installed on all of the primary control components. The system will also play a huge part in the PKG "Green Olympics" mission. - Digitalized information management system
The gymnasium has also integrated a central lighting system, which can be intelligently managed to suit the needs of the Olympics. The PKG, with its siphonic drainage system, intelligent lighting and a central control system, displays sparks of advanced technology in every corner of the building.
Preservation of the ancient garden
When planning for the gym construction, a 190-year-old historic site named Zhibeiziyuan was found. It is a royal garden built during the Qing Dynasty. On the southern side of the garden, six ancient trees grew their roots. To preserve this heritage, the designers replaced the original plan, moving the venue east to avoid the garden.
This increased the project difficulty level, as the facility is now closer to the construction site of the 4th subway line. Costs were also increased, as the underground pipe system also had to be relocated to the new site. As a result, a unique "ancient-modern" landscape was formed. The new Olympic venue will stand in harmony with the hundred-year-old ancient site in one of China's premier universities.
Convenient transportation
The Peking University Gymnasium is located in the southwest area of Peking University's campus, which is approximately 8km from the Olympic Village. It is transportation accessible, situated just east of Zhongguancun Street and the 4th subway line. Peking University's "May Fourth Plaza" and the underground parking lot have provided hundreds of parking spaces for the venue.
Post-Games function
After the Olympics, PKU Gymnasium will be converted into a comprehensive gymnasium for the university. It will accommodate table tennis, handball, basketball, badminton, volleyball, indoor football, and gymnastics competitions. Also, the gymnasium will be used for professional training, physical education classes, assemblies, and other activities.
Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium
Venue Beijing Science and Technology University GymnasiumLocation Beijing Science and Technology University
Type New
Floor area 24,662 sq m
Permanent seats 4,000
Temporary seats 4,000
Use during Olympic Games Judo, Taekwondo
Use during Paralympic Games Wheelchair Basketball, Wheelchair Rugby
Groundbreaking date Oct 18, 2005
Post-Games function The Gym will serve as a comprehensive indoor center for various sports activities, aquatics and fitness training, and will also be suitable for indoor athletic competitions.
The Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium will hold the Judo and Taekwondo competitions of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and Wheelchair Rugby and Wheelchair Basketball competitions of the Paralympic Games. The gymnasium meets all the competition requirements for these sports. After the Olympic Games, the gymnasium could be used to host sport competitions, art performances and cultural activities. It will also continue to serve the campus.
Capacity
The gymnasium covers an area of 2.38 hectares and the total floor space of construction reaches 24,662 square meters. Designed by the Tsinghua University Architectural Design & Research Institute, the venue consists of a main gym and a comprehensive facility. The main gymnasium contains a 60 m x 40 m competition area and 8,012 spectator seats, including 4,080 permanent seats and 3,932 temporary seats. Additionally, there is a 50 m X 25 m standard-sized swimming pool.
Nature-friendly and people-friendly
The gymnasium takes full advantage of sunlight, rainwater, fresh air, and other renewable resources to address the power, air conditioning, and water supply needs. The gymnasium also has a solar-powered hot water system, an adjustable frequency air conditioning system, and a reclaimed water system.
The biggest highlight of the USTB Gymnasium lies in the installation of 148 fiber optic light pipes that are 530 mm in diameter - more than in any other Beijing Olympic venue so far. On days with strong sunlight, the light pipes will be able to meet the lighting needs for sports training in the gymnasium. At night, the light pipes will transmit light through the gymnasium' s roof, creating an attractive nightscape effect.
Throughout the entire construction process, making the gymnasium people-friendly was a top priority. Full consideration was given to making the venue accessible to people with a disability.
Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium
Venue Beijing University of Technology GymnasiumLocation Beijing University of Technology
Type New
Use during Olympic Games Badminton, Rhythmic Gymnastics
Floor area 24,383 sq m
Permanent seats 5,800
Temporary seats 1,700
Groundbreaking date Jun. 30, 2005
Post-Games function The Gym will provide spaces for activities of students and faculty, whilst facilitating the training of the badminton teams affiliated with the International Badminton Federation and the General Administration of Sports. The gymnasium will occasionally be open to the public.
The Beijing University of Technology (BUT) Gymnasium is the only Olympic venue located in Beijing's southeastern area. It will serve as the Badminton and Rhythmic Gymnastics venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Following the Games, the BUT Gymnasium will remain an important cultural legacy of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It will become a landmark building on the school's campus as well as for Beijing's southeastern area.
Capacity
With a building area of 24,383 square meters, the BUT Gymnasium has seating capacity for 7,500 with 5,800 permanent seats and 1,700 removable ones. The gymnasium includes a competition hall and a warm-up hall.
An environmental-friendly venue
A number of energy-saving and environmental-friendly methods were used at the BUT Gymnasium, including rainwater recycling, ground-source heating in the winter, and a water-source heat pump for cooling in the summer.
A world record in suspension dome structures
The BUT Gymnasium boasts the world's largest prestressed suspension dome ceiling 93m in diameter. Also, the steel used in producing the structure weighs less than 1,200 tons, averaging 60 kg per square meters.
Advanced ventilation and air conditioning system
Both badminton and rhythmic gymnastics have strict requirements for wind speed during competition. Particularly for badminton, the International Badminton Federation's (IBF) standard is a constant room temperature of 26 degrees Celsius, with the wind speed no higher than 0.2 m/s.
The BUT Gymnasium can do better than that: it can match the IBF wind speed standard and also keep the room temperature constant at 25 degrees Celsius. The secret lies in the spectator seats. Underneath every other seat, there are three vents 13 cm in diameter - a total of 9,100 vents are located throughout the gymnasium.
Beijing Olympic Green Tennis Court
Venue Beijing Olympic Green Tennis Court
Location Olympic Green
Type New
Use during Olympic Games Tennis
Use during Paralympic Games Wheelchair Tennis
Floor area 26,514 sq m
Permanent seats 17,400
Temporary seats None
Groundbreaking date Mar 23, 2007
The flower-shaped Beijing Olympic Green Tennis Court will serve as the venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It will hold the Tennis competitions during the Games and also host the Wheelchair Ten