Olympic Park

The Bird's Nest hosted the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, athletics, football final of the 2008 Summer Olympics and those of the 2008 Summer Paralympics. After the 29th Olympics, the Bird's Nest booms thousands of people travel to visit the National Stadium for long. It is the largest steel structure in the world. The stadium cost 423 million US dollars. The whole steel structure weighs 42,000 tons. It occupies an area of 250,000sqm, has permanent seats 80,000, temporary seats 11,000. The project started in December, 2003, completed in March, 2008. It was a joint venture among architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron, project architect Stefan Marbach, artist Ai Weiwei, and CADG which was led by chief architect Li Xinggang.

Water Cube hosted the Swimming, Diving and Synchronized Swimming events and witnessed 25 world records broken in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The Water Cube is the only Olympic venue financed in part by donations from overseas Chinese. Total donations collected over 800 million yuan. It occupies an area of 80,000 sqm, and has 17,000 seats including 11,000 temporary ones. Comprising a steel space frame, it is the largest ETFE(Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) clad structure in the world with over 100,000 m² of ETFE pillows that are only 0.2 mm (1/125 of an inch) in total thickness. The ETFE cladding allows more light and heat penetration than traditional glass, resulting in a 30% decrease in energy costs. The outer wall is based on the Weaire–Phelan structure, a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap foam. The complex Weaire–Phelan pattern was developed by slicing through bubbles in soap foam, resulting in more irregular, organic patterns than foam bubble structures proposed earlier by the scientist Kelvin. Using the Weaire–Phelan geometry, the Water Cube's exterior cladding is made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles, some as large as 9.14 meters (30 feet) across, with seven different sizes for the roof and 15 for the walls.