That would be 44,000 tons of steel and the equivalent of $423 million in construction cost. The Beijing National Stadium (pictured above in a gorgeous photo by toomanytribbles), often referred to as Herzog & de Meuron’s “Bird’s Nest”, is essentially completed after four years of very high profile construction. Though Herzog & de Meuron are usually given credit for the design, credit in fact goes to the incredibly effective team made up of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, ArupSport, and the Chinese Architecture Design and Research Group in collaboration with the team from Herzog & de Meuron. Regardless, this is an incredible project to have pulled off.
It’s a stunning structure. The massive yet delicate quality of the steel skeleton seems to defy the enormous scale of the building. The image below is a detail of the steel super structure while under construction:
I love this image below with the light glinting off of the steel at night:
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April 25th, 2008 at 11:10 am
John,
Have you seen the aquatic center across the street from this stadium? Also pretty cool…
Nice to see you yesterday, sorry it wasn’t a longer visit.
PK
April 26th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I have seen that, and it is really, really cool. I’ll post about it soon and just saw a great video of the structure on Youtube.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:12 am
[...] This animated short is going to be used by BBC Sport to introduce its coverage of the upcoming Olympics being hosted in China. It’s definitely interesting. The short is based on the classic Chinese story Journey to The West recently adapted by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of the Gorillaz. I especially like the appearance of the Beijing National Stadium, the “Bird’s Nest,” that we’ve discussed here previously. [...]
August 16th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
[...] photographs of the Olympic flame burning atop the Beijing National Stadium, the “Bird’s Nest,” with the moon appearing to be singed as it passes through the flames. The image above was taken by [...]