schneiderism

Beautiful 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 toomanytribbles, and is one from a series of photos of this nicely timed opportunity. Click to check them out as her photography is excellent. Most of the images I have used here to feature the new architecture of Beijing have been snapped by toomanytribbles, and I have especially enjoyed her periodic pictures of the CCTV Tower during construction.

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: