BEIJING, China's capital city, known for the architectural splendour of its centuries-old palaces and temples, is getting a new look that could have been plucked from science fiction.
A series of landmarks, notable for their futuristic design, will greet visitors to the Olympics in August. They include a stadium that looks like a giant bird's nest, a swimming venue built of bubbles and a pair of black office towers that lean to
ward each other at a 10° angle.
"This is the hottest place on earth in terms of architecture," said Rory McGowan, of Arup, the British design and engineering firm that is involved in several signature projects in the city. Architects and designers "are flocking over here in the thousands".
As China's economy started taking off about 20 years ago, a similar transformation began changing the face of Beijing. Scores of traditional courtyard homes, factories and drab, communist-inspired apartment blocks have been levelled to make way for high-rise buildings with names such as Fortune Plaza, Soho and Park Avenue.
Now, with the Olympics coming, the construction has turned into a round-the-clock frenzy as the host city seeks to convey an innovative image.
Such projects could change Beijing's image as a stodgy city, particularly compared with cosmopolitan Shanghai, where foreign architects first gravitated a few years ago. The "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium was designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, known for turning a hulking former power plant in London into the Tate Modern art museum.
The Beijing stadium is a 91,000-seat bowl that will host the opening and closing ceremonies, along with track and field events. The stadium's nickname comes from an exterior of steel "twigs" that form a massive, curving nest.
Motorists regularly disrupt traffic as they stop to take photographs. Across from the Bird's Nest is perhaps Beijing's most whimsical building: the Water Cube, the swimming venue for the Games.
Builders used material similar to plastic wrap to create 4,000 bubbles, which were filled with air and bolted to a metal frame. The material allows sunlight to filter in and the sounds of splashing water to flow out.
China Central TV's new headquarters was planned by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who designed the Seattle Public Library, the Prada store in New York and the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal.
Its two 37-storey towers of black glass on diamond-shaped steel beams bend toward each other and are joined at the top by a sloping horizontal section that ranges from nine to 14 storeys. It looks like a pair of Bermudas, and the Chinese have dubbed it "Big Shorts." Not everyone likes the city's changing look, however. "Most of the venue designers are foreign and they don't know Chinese culture well enough," said Zhang Song, a professor in the college of architecture and urban planning at Tongji University in Shanghai.
"They tended to focus mainly on surrealism, avant-garde style and post-modernism.
"These things are very good for a short time, but I wonder if they will last as classic design."
Beijing's other new buildings include a gargantuan airport terminal, with slanted skylights atop an arching roof, meant to mimic scales on a dragon's back. In the heart of the city is a glass and titanium dome nicknamed The Egg, the sprawling national theatre entered by walking under a clear-bottomed moat.
The change is dizzying – many of the structures have opened just within the past year – but city planners shrug it off. "I don't think it's anything to make a fuss about," said Tan Xuxiang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission. "It's like a growing child. I'm a 12- to 14-year-old kid. If you see me after two years and I haven't grown, then I have some kind of illness, right?"
Some, though, lament the loss of old Beijing. While the imperial Forbidden City and other tourist sites remain, many of the old courtyard homes – nestled amid the city's hutongs, or alleyways – have been lost. The days when hutong dwellers filled the streets in the evenings are giving way to an anonymous, urban lifestyle.
WHAT NEXTCHINA has launched a nationwide campaign to defuse protests ahead of the Olympics, days after a riot in the country's south-west.
Officials are determined to keep a lid on petition campaigns by discontented citizens and to prevent "mass incidents".
Disgruntled farmers and residents often pressurise local officials by journeying to provincial capitals or to Beijing, with complaints about lost land and corruption.
Last Saturday, officials took part in a nationwide videoconference on a new stability drive. One report of it, on a local government website in the province of Zhejiang, said: "Protecting social harmony and stability and ensuring the Beijing Olympics go safely and smoothly has become a tough battle that every department at every level must win."
An official in the south-west province of Sichuan said: "Our most fundamental demand is that zero protesters go to Beijing, zero go to the province capital and there are zero mass petitions and mass incidents."
The full article contains 860 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
