Beijing building materials arrive at a
construction site hardly unusual in this
construction crazytown
but these building materials and this
building are different really different
ninety kilometers of steel 22,000 beams
following no conventional straight lines
a maze of metal that’s enough steel to
circle more than 200 Olympic running
tracks and it’s covered with plastic
100,000 square meters of it enough to
cover 14 full-sized rugby pitches cut in
two cushions as big as 9 metres in
diameter but only 2 tenths of a
millimeter thick nearly 8 times thinner
than a penny officially it’s called the
National Aquatic Centre but in the world
of mega architecture it’s known as the
Water Cube it’s a fantastic honeycomb
that looks as light and fragile as a
tinker toy
but in reality it weighs six and a half
thousand tonnes but almost as heavy as
all the metal in the Eiffel Tower and
inside its walls and ceiling nothing but
air there is nothing else like it who
came up with this amazing building
engineering team leader
Tristram Khafre
Architects John building Mark Butler and
Chris boss a fire engineer Maryann Foley
structural engineer mark arc install
building modeler Stewart bull
environmental engineer Heiko Shepherd’s
Chinese design team project manager we
want our part of a 100 strong
architectural and engineering dream team
a team that envisions the original the
astonishing and the apparently
impossible and made it into a mega
structure
construction site hardly unusual in this
construction crazytown
but these building materials and this
building are different really different
ninety kilometers of steel 22,000 beams
following no conventional straight lines
a maze of metal that’s enough steel to
circle more than 200 Olympic running
tracks and it’s covered with plastic
100,000 square meters of it enough to
cover 14 full-sized rugby pitches cut in
two cushions as big as 9 metres in
diameter but only 2 tenths of a
millimeter thick nearly 8 times thinner
than a penny officially it’s called the
National Aquatic Centre but in the world
of mega architecture it’s known as the
Water Cube it’s a fantastic honeycomb
that looks as light and fragile as a
tinker toy
but in reality it weighs six and a half
thousand tonnes but almost as heavy as
all the metal in the Eiffel Tower and
inside its walls and ceiling nothing but
air there is nothing else like it who
came up with this amazing building
engineering team leader
Tristram Khafre
Architects John building Mark Butler and
Chris boss a fire engineer Maryann Foley
structural engineer mark arc install
building modeler Stewart bull
environmental engineer Heiko Shepherd’s
Chinese design team project manager we
want our part of a 100 strong
architectural and engineering dream team
a team that envisions the original the
astonishing and the apparently
impossible and made it into a mega
structure
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