Evoking the Jetsons in Beijing

Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers visits the still-under-construction Herzog and de Meuron Olympics Stadium (nicknamed the "Bird's Nest" by locals) and National Aquatics Center designed by Arup and posts about it on his fascinating blog. See photos of what the finished stadium will look like here. He talks to a PR rep involved with the Olympics committe who has this to say about the "wow factor" of these structures.

“You have much more of a Buck Rogers, gee whiz, Battlestar Galactica feeling to these venues then you would at any other Olympics. You’ve got a facility in the national stadium, dubbed the Bird’s Nest, that looks like something Godzilla would live in. You have the Water Cube filled with plastic bubbles all the way around it that the Jetsons might live in, something very futuristic and never before seen at any Olympics Game.”

“The difference here is that it is tied into the Chinese culture. You have yin and yang. The Water Cube, the main stadium which will be lit in red as fire. So you have the elements of earth surrounded by water and the dragon’s tail coming from the north and the Olympic forest. The entire Olympic Green structure has been looked at, not just mapped out for facilities but something that makes sense for the Chinese culture and the Chinese people.”