Writer Analyzes Meaning, Value Of Beijing's Olympic Architecture
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Writer Questions Sensibility Of
Facilities Built For Beijing Olympics |
Beijing's Olympic Green, home to the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center, is a "testament to the global ambitions" of China, according to the NEW YORKER's Paul Goldberger, who wrote under the header, "Beijing’s Olympic architecture is spectacular, but what message does it send?" The two facilities, built in advance of this summer's Games, are as "innovative as any architecture on the planet, marvels of imagination and engineering that few countries would have the nerve or the money to attempt." The Beijing Olympics are "driven by image, not by sensitive urban planning." While it is "true that there has been a much needed and well-executed expansion" of the city's subway system, "most of the impact of the Olympics has been cosmetic -- the trees planted along the expressway to the airport, for example, or the cleanup of some of the roadways leading to the Olympic Green." Goldberger wrote the "brightness of the Olympic halo gives Beijing's relentless expansion a surface sheen, but it's only a distraction from the city's deeper planning problems, such as air and water pollution and overcrowding."
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Architectural Firm Envisions Olympic
Green Being Turned Into Large Park |
BEYOND THE OLYMPICS: Boston-based architectural firm Sasaki Associates, which in '02 won the rights to plan the Olympic Green, envisions the site "becoming a large park, with each of the major buildings taking on a public function." Meanwhile, the stadium, often referred to as the Bird's Nest, will "remain as the national stadium, its capacity reduced to a more practical eighty thousand by the removal of several tiers of seats," while the aquatic center "will lose almost two-thirds of its seventeen thousand seats, the upper tiers to be replaced by multipurpose rooms." But Goldberger wrote regardless of what the architects envision, "it's not clear that the Chinese are really that interested in long-term uses. The focus is on August, and on confirming before the world Beijing’s status as a modern, global city." And after the Games, it is "hard to see how the Olympic park will relate to the rest of the city, beyond being a welcome piece of green space." The "success of what China has built for the Olympics will ultimately be measured not by how these buildings look during the Games but by the kind of change they bring about in the city." Beijing's Olympic architecture, in both "conception and execution, ... is unimpeachably brilliant." But the "development also exemplifies traits -- the reckless embrace of the fashionable and the global, the authoritarian planning heedless of human cost -- that are elsewhere denaturing, even destroying, the fabric of the city" (NEW YORKER, 6/2 issue).
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