GAD Editorial · Published ·
Every Olympic Games gets the stadium it deserves, and Beijing 2008 got the most photographed one ever built. The National Stadium — the Bird's Nest — opened on 28 June 2008 as the centrepiece of an Olympics China staged as a coming-out party. Designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron with the artist Ai Weiwei as artistic consultant, it turned structural engineering into public spectacle.
The concept is disarmingly simple: two independent structures, an inner concrete bowl and an outer steel lattice, woven together so the facade is the structure. The famous tangle has no straight lines and no hidden frame; the load paths are exposed like the twigs of a nest. At 91,000 seats it was built for scale, and it got the moments to match: the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Games, and then, fourteen years later, the ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Games — the first stadium in history to host both.
The US$428 million price tag bought more than a venue. It bought an image that now stands for the entire idea of the twenty-first-century mega-event: architecture as broadcast, a building designed to be understood in a single aerial shot and remembered forever.
Key facts
- Completed: 2008 (opened 28 June 2008)
- Location: Olympic Green, Beijing, China
- Architects: Herzog & de Meuron (Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron), with Ai Weiwei as artistic consultant
- Scale: 91,000 seats; US$428 million
- Recognition: hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of both the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics