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Beijing's big air slope offers Olympics viewers a captivating example of adaptive reuse

2022-02-08T15:55:00-05:00

Freeski big air opened its Olympic competition Monday at the world’s first permanent, city-based big air facility, a repurposed steel mill on the west side of Beijing that’s made a stunning backdrop for one of the Games’ newest sports.

The venue is the one-time home of a steel production facility that was shuttered ahead of the 2008 games to create a generally greener picture of the country to Western news outlets. Its former grounds have been transformed into a greenery-laced headquarters for the games’ Organizing Committee, with an additional industrial sound-installation infused multi-use museum and office development occupying its former blast furnace.

The transformation of the site will eventually include the overhauling of one of its ominous cooling towers into a wedding venue. The Copenhill-esque slope is slightly larger than similar structures seen in Boston and Atlanta and is noteworthy as the first venue to host the newly-added event, which has been described as a “high-risk home run derby for snowboarding and freestyle skiing.”

Ai Weiwei still wants nothing to do with the Bird's Nest stadium two decades on

2022-02-07T16:47:00-05:00

Years prior to his departure from his home country, Ai famously consulted on the design of the venue hosting Friday night's opening ceremony: The Beijing National Stadium, or "Bird's Nest." But the artist distanced himself from the project and criticized China's hosting of the Olympics ahead of the opening ceremony, believing it to be a propaganda tool at odds with what he felt were the oppressive realities of life in the country.

Ai Weiwei originally conceived of the stadium as an inspirational structure that carried a message to China and the rest of the world about the potential for democracy within his home country, but the still-in-exile artist now says that the symbolic uses of the building are being warped into an instrument of state power.

Weiwei has been reiterating the same criticisms of the project he jointly designed with Herzog & de Meuron for over a decade, lamenting the IOC’s penchant for “standing next to authoritarians” and stating that the country “has gone backwards” in terms of its human rights record since its completion fourteen years ago. He was also quick to compare the misuse of his architectural output to the CCP’s presentation of his father’s legacy as a nationalistic poet.

“As an architect, my goal was the same as other architects, that is, to design it as perfectly as possible,” Weiwei told The Associated Press in a recent email statement. “The way it was used afterwards went in ...

Populous-designed 'Ice Ribbon' for the 2022 Winter Olympics takes center stage in Beijing

2022-02-03T13:08:00-05:00

The eyes of the world will soon turn to the new Populous-designed National Speed Skating Oval as the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics prepare to kick off in Beijing.

As the only new permanent venue at this year’s games, the 'Ice Ribbon' takes its place in line with the National Aquatics Center and Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron-designed Bird’s Nest on a central corridor called the Olympic Green. The design is meant to symbolize speed and dynamism associated with the sport of speed skating.

Image courtesy Populous

The 12,000-seat venue will host the speed skating events and later be transformed into the long-term home for China’s newIce and Snow Sports Development Plan, which aims to get an impressive 300 million people involved in winter sports by the year 2025.

Image courtesy Populous

“Much of the inspiration for the conceptual design of the ‘Ice Ribbon’ came from a traditional ice game played in old Beijing which involved a high-speed spinning ice top,” explains Populous Ch...

Another Olympics, another story of displacement

2015-10-01T13:00:00-04:00

[...] Team China beat out Team Kazakhstan to host the games. Zhangjiakou, a city of 4 million people in the mountains of Hebei province, will host the games alongside Beijing. [...] They're worried I'll talk to people like Lu Wanku, who will be forced to move to make way for the region’s investment boom. Lu herds cattle and has lived in his tiny brick home for more than 20 years. His home is now in the way of a Four Seasons Town Dream Resort ski run. [...] Lu has two weeks to move out.

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