Detail on the Beijing National Stadium 北京国家体育场
In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, you would have doubtless seen numerous advertisements and news reports about this. Beijing has spents billions of dollars to spruce up the city and built totally new infrastructure to support this global event. New subway lines were constructed. Centuries old hutong were torn down to “sanitize” the streets of Beijing. In other cases, entirely new zones have been built just for this, one of these places was the Olympic Sports Center where the National Aquatics Center is. However, what probably is the centerpiece of the Olympic Sports Center and of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, is undoubtedly the National Stadium 北京国家体育场.
The Massive Beijing National Stadium 北京国家体育场
The National Stadium has been featured countless of times on television for its truly unique and impressive architecture. This was where the opening ceremony was held and later the athletics competitions. It is actually two separate structures, the first one is a bowl which can sit 80,000 people, while the second structure is the streel frame surrounding the structure. The structure rather organic in nature and is very pleasing to the eye. A walk around the stadium with give different shapes to the visitors, since it is not uniform. There is an entrance fee to go in the building worth CNY 50. These days, it earns money primarily by tourism, though it didn’t get any from me.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/NationalStadium.kmz} zoom=19]