Architecture Skyscrapers: Beijing National Aquatics Center. The Beijing National Aquatics Center (simplified Chinese: 北京国家游泳中心; traditional Chinese: 北京國家游泳中心), also officially known as the National Aquatics Center, and colloquially known as the Water Cube (simplified Chinese: 水立方), is an aquatics center that was built alongside Beijing National Stadium in the Olympic Green for the swimming competitions of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Swimmers at the Water Cube broke 25 world records during the 2008 Olympics.
After the Olympics, the building underwent a 200 million Yuan revamp to turn half of its interior into a water park. The building officially re-opened on August 8, 2010.
In July 2003, the Water Cube design was chosen from 10 proposals in an international architectural competition for the aquatic center project. The Water Cube was specially designed and built by a consortium made up of PTW Architects (an Australian architecture firm), Arup international engineering group, CSCEC (China State Construction Engineering Corporation), and CCDI (China Construction Design International) of Shanghai. Contextually the cube symbolises earth whilst the circle (represented by the stadium) represents heaven. Hence symbolically the water cube references Chinese symbolic architecture.
The outer wall is based on the Weaire–Phelan structure, a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap lather. The complex Weaire–Phelan pattern was developed by slicing through bubbles in soap foam, resulting in more irregular, organic patterns than foam bubble structures proposed earlier by the scientist Kelvin. It also has a total land surface of 65,000 square meters and will cover a total of 32,000 square metres (7.9 acres). Although called the Water Cube, the aquatic center is really a rectangular box (cuboid)- 178 metres (584 ft) square and 31 metres (102 ft) high.
The Aquatics Center hosted the swimming, diving and Synchronized Swimming events during the Olympics. Many people believe the Water Cube to be the fastest Olympic pool in the world. It is 1 meter deeper than most Olympic pools.
The building's popularity has spawned many copycat structures throughout China. On October 19, 2009, the Water Cube was closed to the public to begin a massive renovation of a portion of the complex into a water park. The redesigned facility contains numerous water rides and slides, a wave pool, and spa areas.
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