ARUP

The eyes of the world will be on the National Stadium when it hosts the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Games.  Home to the athletic track and field events, the Stadium sits in the Olympic Green and holds a massive 91,000 seats.

The structure’s vast scale and dramatic form have created a new icon for China and the City of Beijing.  The circular form of the National Stadium represents Heaven, while the adjacent square form of the National Aquatics Centre, also design-engineered by Arup, is a reflection of the Chinese symbol for Earth.

The form of the National Stadium is popularly described as a ‘bird’s nest’ with interwoven twigs and the pattern was also inspired by traditional Chinese 'crazed' pottery, found in Beijing markets. Although seemingly random, the pattern abides by complex rules imposed on the structure in order to be able to define the geometry. Without this, the National Stadium would have been impossible to build.

To minimise the amount of materials used, the stadium was designed from the inside out.  Firstly the seating was established and then the façade was engineered to envelop the spectators.  If unravelled, the steel tubes that form the structure would stretch 36 kilometres. Every one of the 7500 elements was designed individually.

The National Stadium is located in one of the world’s most seismic zones and needs to withstand major earthquakes without collapse or structural damage.  Advanced computer analysis was used to test the structure under different strengths and direction of earthquake.

The National Stadium combines a sense of chaos with one of order so that the spectator will be left wondering which aspects of the structure are functional and which have been included for appearance alone.