 The
Bird’s Nest
and Sightseeing
The
National Stadium, as the main track and field stadium for the 2008
Summer Olympics, is dubbed the "bird's nest" because of its
innovative grid formation.
The
twig-like structural elements and the bowl-shaped roof are the
masterpiece of the project, yet they pose great challenges for
technicians and workers to make the building stand on its own feet.
It
was built with 36 km of unwrapped steel, with a combined weight of
45,000 tons. The stadium has some 11,000 square meters of
underground rooms with waterproof walls.
The
centre piece of the 2008 Summer Olympics was the Beijing National
Stadium, nicknamed "The Bird's Nest" because of its nest-like
skeletal structure. The stadium hosted both the opening and closing
ceremonies as well as the athletics competition.;
The spectacular Bird's Nest stadium, hailed as the finest
arena in the world and the centerpiece of the most expensive
Olympics in history, is full of hidden symbolism.
In Chinese mythology, the sun is represented by a circle and
the moon by a square, reflected by the shape of the bird's nest
and the Water Cube aquatic centre opposite, reinforced when the
venues are lit at night, red for the Bird's Nest and blue for
the Water Cube.
The shapes also echo the Chinese symbols for male and female,
and are built either side of the north-south axis road which
runs in a perfect straight line for three miles through Beijing,
centered on the Forbidden City.
The Water Cube
and Sightseeing
The
National Aquatics Center, a major venue for the 2008 Olympic Games,
also called the "Water Cube", was completed on the morning of
January 28, 2008.
The
"water cube" comprises over 100,000sqm of ETFE foils, making it the
single largest, most complicated and most comprehensive ETFE
structure in the world to date. The venue will be used for swimming,
diving, and water polo and synchronized swimming competitions for
the 2008 Olympic Games
In the future, this site will become a water theme park and publicly
opened swimming pool. Keep updated with us and see how this cube
will become an additional attraction for your Beijing Tour.
Tours to 2008
Beijing Olympic Game Sites: Bird's Nest and Water Cube
Check our Beijing Olympic Bus Tour Programs. You can tour Beijing with our
group bus tour programs for various routes.
Learn more about Beijing private and
non-private tours.
|
