CHINA:Beijing's Olympic organisers unveiled the National Aquatic Centre, or Water Cube, yesterday, a giant blue block based on the geometry of soap bubbles worked out by two Irish professors, and the latest architectural marvel to transform the Chinese capital's skyline ahead of the August games, writes Clifford Coonan, in Beijing.
Set like a bubble-wrapped box placed a few hundred metres from the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, the futuristic marine structure was opened by Beijing Olympic Organising Committee president Liu Qi and city mayor Guo Jinlong.
The Water Cube will have five pools, including one with a wave machine - organisers are already thinking ahead to how the Water Cube will be used when the Olympic visitors have gone. There will also be an organically shaped restaurant area carved out of the bubble structure.
The total cost of the building is a billion yuan (€94 million), with €78 million of that donated by overseas Chinese from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
The outside and inside skin of the building is made of a Teflon-like material called ETFE (ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene), said Tristram Carfrae, project leader for the engineering group Arup, which has a large Irish contingent. The material should let 90 per cent of sunlight in.
"There are two layers, separated by an interior passage that allows the building to breathe like a greenhouse," he said. The membrane structure looks down on 17,000 seats, of which 6,000 are permanent.
During the building process, the membranes became coated with concrete dust, which accumulated on the bubbles of the roof and gave it a grey-ish appearance. Carfrae said he was confident a solution would be found to clean the bubbles before the games come around.
The building project was handled by Arup, the Australian architects PTW, the giant building firm China State Construction and Chinese design companies.
While there is often competition for credit on a project of this scale with this level of innovation, Arup's project leader Carfrae emphasised the collaborative nature of the structure.
The idea for the bubble came from a photograph he saw in one of the architect's documents. He later discovered the photo was of a structure isolated in 1993 by Prof Denis Weaire, head of the physics department at Trinity College Dublin, and his research student, Robert Phelan.
The shape the two Irish scientists came up with is the most efficient "ideal" structure for foam, one with the least possible wasted space between individual, identical bubbles. They were following up on a challenge laid down more than a century earlier by the Belfast-born physicist William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, to divide space into equal volumes, all with a minimum surface area.
"It's a fantastic structure for the earthquake region of Beijing, and it comes from it being natural," said Carfrae.
"This is an opportunity for everyone to see that Beijing is an open place. It's an amazing job that's been done, first class in the world. This is one of the most challenging projects we've been involved in," said Li Zhun of the giant contracting firm China State Construction.
Carfrae said the building would use solar energy to heat the pools and the interior area, and all backwash water is to be filtered and returned to the swimming pools, and the overall balance of solar energy and other sustainable forms will reduce energy requirements by 30 per cent in the building.
Viewed from the air, the Water Cube is intended to counterpoint the red-hued, rounder National Stadium, forming a large yin and yang stadium. Both buildings are situated either side of a north-south axis that divides the old imperial capital, which is considered a very lucky position by some in Beijing.
With so much water and yin and yang around, did feng shui have anything to do with the construction of the stadium? Contractors were tight-lipped. But given that the games are staring at 8.08 pm on the eighth day of the eighth month, 2008, it's a fair bet an auspicious positioning for the building was chosen.
