China: New Great Walls - Construction for the Beijing Olympics (NG) (Energy Priorities)

Beijing is building up for the Olympics, spending $40 billion to impress the world -- and pushing commercial architecture to its limits. National Geographic's May 2008 special-edition issue, "China, Inside the Dragon," features dozens of articles, most of them short, all of them about China.

Denis Du Bois
April 30, 2008

This 13-page National Geographic feature article includes wonderful photography of the buildings under construction or recently completed for the 2008 Summer Games.

Beijing 2008 Olympic Main Stadium photo on EnergyPriorities.com

"The nest" -- Beijing 2008 Olympic Main Stadium -- is one of several bold designs under construction or recently completed. (Xin Zhu photo)

Article author Ted Fishman ("China, Inc.") says Beijing might be the largest construction zone in history. Low-cost labor allows the Chinese to build projects too expensive for their foreign architects' homelands, and in very short timeframes. Many of the bold designs are disconnected from Chinese culture, and some have displaced it.

There's the titanium dome of "the egg," the National Center for the Performing Arts, near Tiananmen Square. Then there's "the nest" of steel twigs cradling the National Stadium. The "twisted doughnut" is China Central Television Headquarters' leaning tower structure. And "the water cube" looks like a block of soap bubbles, blue by night, silver by day, dreamt of by Olympic swimmers. The article has photos of them all.

I found two other short pieces in the print issue that are worth a look, and I haven't found them on the web site. "Energy: King Coal" charts the coal power plants built in China since 1990, by size. "Resources: Hungry for Oil" illustrates the growth in China's oil imports since 1996, with the source countries graphed by millions of barrels imported.

This month marks 30 years that I've subscribed to NG. That explains all the boxes in the garage.