Architecture: Beijing National Stadium Analysis

This essay uses Beijing National Stadium (officially the National Stadium), designed by Herzog & de Meuron) as an example critically analyse and discuss the diversified interpretations of ornament. Being much more than an intricate architectural element, contemporary architecture is believed in giving more focus on the function of ornament other than just merely decorative. Although current architecture receives ornament enthusiastically due to its design potentials, it still remains as a problematic and critical topic. As Antoine states the importance of ornament as it is both about the new type of subjectivity characteristic of the digital age and about the possible contribution of architecture to the emerging collective meanings and values. In order to give the clear understanding degrees, this essay will study ornament and overlap its re-emergence with social, cultural, and economic status quo using one of the most sophisticated examples of postmodern space, Beijing National Stadium. Explore in-depth how ornament becomes integral to architecture as in the sense of structural ornament, demonstrate the multiple design approach behind it and argue how it can reflect a much greater picture toward the economy, society and politics.

Beijing National Stadium (Figure 1), also known as Bird’s Nest (first named by its architects), is built for the use of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Paralympics and is planned to be used again in the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The project constructed on 24 December 2003, officially opened on 28 June 2008. Some noticeable background of the architects is that they are praised for their dedication to tradition and vernacular forms, on the other hand, their thoroughly modern innovation. However, in recent years their style has shifted to focus more on the structure and depth of their buildings.

Historical Hierarchy of Ornament

The historical conception of ornament was always closely linked with the history of style, characteristic ornaments with definite rules for its design, production, and application were generated through each of which. (Deniz BALIK and Açalya ALLMER, 2016) Antoine (2013) describes architecture as a living tradition than as a discipline, which introspects of its former achievements sometimes and learn from history. Symmetry was an inspiration for Renaissance, Neoclassical and Baroque architecture (Figure 2). Before Modernism, ornament, defined as the “spiritual demand for true significance” by Wright, F. L. (1971) was a basic element of architecture yet space was not considered as such. He believes the functionality is essential for buildings but the integral Ornament is the soul.” Modernism “is rooted in minimal and true use of the material as well as the absence of ornament” (Harvey 46). Laugier (1755) believes the true principles of architecture is to only make a successful shelter and a building with just main structure is ‘perfectly’ done. Like Adolf (1908: 229) explains, the ornament is no longer express or link to our culture and “has no human connection at all.

Now the return of ornament in contemporary architecture a dramatic reverse since the traditional decoration extinct in the early 20th-century. The reason behind this historical continuity between past and present can be summarised into two points: politics and subjectivity. The first reason could be put down to the transformation in social values. The architecture needed to be reflected as social and political authorities through ornaments. Traditional ornaments were not meant merely for pleasure but delivered information about the purpose of buildings and directly involved in the projection of social values such as social status and hierarchies such as the rank of the owners. However, one of the essential applications of ornament today relates to the aesthetics of consumption. According to Wright, F. L. (1971), architecture should move away from the concept of wasting space and material on structures with no purpose of the form. Secondly, relative to the traditional conception, ornament in contemporary architecture is full of new aspects due to its expansion through the digital medium. Today, we are dealing with a dramatic variety of architectural approaches that is almost impossible to master the entirety. Softwires have allowed dizzyingly complex computer-generated designs and gorgeously realized in fashionable materials. Architects have more potential to play with patterns, texture and patterns and the definition of ornament today is quite different from what was represented in the past. (Deniz BALIK and Açalya ALLMER, 2016; Antoine, 2013) More recent works such as the National Stadium in Beijing demonstrate such an example.

Its skin is made of bones and the unconventional cladding (the steel facade) is the first obvious feature of the postmodern space (Jameson 1991). Herzog (2008), the architect, describes the stadium design as ‘a vase for people to come together with a clear ornamental position from a distance’ with a ‘chaotic abstract quality’ at closer range. The architects made great efforts to secure a quality of finishes and details in the places where it matters, at the same time, achieving a loose and relaxed trait that suits a sports arena. The creative detailed twisting steel beams and poles were carefully designed yet the dancing stadium’s box-section steel beams hardly embody any rule-based method. Despite its random appearance, architects created a structure that is actually nonrepetitive, each half of the roof is basically identical in design. (Pasternack, Alex and Pearson, Clifford, 2008) ‘We’re interested in complexity and ornamentation,’ said Herzog (2008), ‘but of the kind you would find on a Gothic cathedral, where structure and ornamentation are the same.’ Not like what Modernist praise, “less is more”, the designing of the National Stadium’s facade can be seen as “excessive” (Hutzler,2005), which is far more complicated. All these magnificent structure features are sharply contrastive with the “anonymous glass boxes” in contemporary. The transparent ETFE membranes panels between the steel beams of the stadium exposed the entire baring structure as ‘postmodern spatiality hides nothing…everything is now on show’ (Murphet, 2004: 119). The stadium’s exterior is sending a message: when architects are trying to break down the late Modernism which they regard as a sign of authority, Herzog & de Meuron is seeking for exuberance by turning to asymmetrical forms and mysteriously translucent materials, “they challenged that rigid, aesthetic ethos”.

Structure Ornament

In recent decades, ornament’s controversial condition has swung between the two extreme comments of being disgusted and complimented. Some scholars (Deniz BALIK and Açalya ALLMER, 2016) hold the view that the experiment to put ornamental elements as a part of the load-bearing system has shown an intention to produce structural ornament. This result can be provided by creations in which geometry and statics, ornament and structure engage each other and work as one system. For example, the beauty of Frei Otto’s natural constructions (Figure 3) reaches in-deep to the natural history processes such as the structures of bamboo, bones and diatoms germinated. Buildings of this kind expand the contemporary architecture debate in general by adding anthropological perspectives, using themes from nature, clearly refer to the ornamental (Sowa, 2007). Pritzker Prize Jury Chairman J. Carter Brown (2001) said that ‘one is hard put to think of any architects in history that have addressed the integument of architecture with greater imagination and virtuosity.’ The Beijing National Stadium springs from creating a structure that combines space and surface, which are essentially two different existences. Jacques Herzog (2006) believes a contemporary building should have “unity of space and surface”. According to him, ornament who can’t meet this fact becomes extra, no difference with the wallpaper. He reveals that they do not need to explain the necessity of ornament in the National Stadium anymore since ornament has become one with their building form. This statement precisely explains the present concept of ornament and its noticeable design potentials are seen by architects. (Deniz BALIK and Açalya ALLMER, 2016) ‘The facade is not a facade, it’s a structural grid,’ says Jacques Herzog (2008) ‘it is structure, ornament, space and surface.’

The architects describe the National Stadium as a forest, its rounded shape and tangled structure are seen as a spectacular mass from a distance. According to the appearance, it was nicknamed ‘The Bird’s Nest’, this basket knit of steel form the facade of the architecture. Although the building may look like a massive steel sculpture, most of the beams serve as the load-bearing structure instead of being decorative. Here, the inner structure identically serves as the surface (the façade) and the structure at the same time, blur the boundary between the inside of the ‘wall’ and its surrounding. Herzog & de Meuron was famous for creating delicate facades with unusual ‘skins’. Li Xinggang, the chief architect of CADG (China Architecture Design and Research Group), the local design institute with which Herzog & de Meuron worked, suggested the architects move away from this approach. The architects weren’t interested in repeating the past either. So, they expended the idea into no skin, which eventually led them to the nest plan which the architects use an exposed structure to define the building’s form. The “skin” of the National Stadium is constituted by massive steel beams and poles that twist, turn, and overlap mutually in a striking form”. The structure may seem complicated, but it ‘expresses the engineering beneath it,’ explained Kwok (2008).

Cultural approach

Like Van Raaij (2014) states, ornament should blend into the building context, its environment or local culture. The team originally began the exterior design by studying Chinese ceramics. Li Xinggang pointed the coincidence isn’t merely superficial. ‘Why does a Chinese bowl or a Chinese window have this kind of pattern? Maybe the Chinese people like things to appear in this irregular way, but underneath there are very clear rules. The Bird’s Nest developed in this way.’ Ai Weiwei Weiwei, the artistic consultant on the project helped them to understand the balance of order and disorder in Chinese culture, encouraging them to design ‘a crazy, chaotic structure’ (AR, 2005). He shattered a pair of ancient Han Dynasty vases to show the architects how he integrates old and new. The surface of the concrete ‘bowl’ is painted into red (Figure 4), when night comes, a huge red egg glowing inside its nest, one of the building’s few overtly nationalistic touches. (Paul, 2008) The architects, Parrish, have likened the stadium to the crackled glaze of Chinese porcelains, a contemporary take on traditional China (Fiona, 2008).

‘We wanted to introduce a variety of scales,’ said Herzog, from the grand size of the stadium as a whole to some of the smaller, ‘almost intimate’ spaces between the outer and inner structures. The architects created a ‘porous’ building open to its surroundings and with circulation slid between its inner and outer structures (below left) to make a space being ‘a collective building, a public vessel (Paul, 2008)’. Since the spaces between the concrete bowl and the steel exoskeleton are entirely open (spread from top and bottom), natural ventilation is permitted throughout the building. This reflects the idea of “liberate interior space”, brought up by Lloyd (1971), connect the inside and outside of buildings. This 50-foot-wide interstitial area, which Herzog calls the project’s ‘radical space,’ may be the most dramatic part. When Looking out at the Olympic green from behind the stadium’s curving columns, people inside get the sense of being in a giant steel forest. This design allows for unexpected moments of privacy and solitude. Their aim is to break down ”the closed ring from which nothing can escape” that the writer Elias Canetti described in his renowned study of crowds. (Clifford and Nicolai, 2008)

Herzog (2008) believes an architect should have his personal responsibility so they observed love of public space and the ways Chinese people put this to use in daily bases. ‘We conceived of the stadium working like a public sculpture, like an urban landscape where everyone can climb up and down, meet and dance and do all those fantastic things that people would never do in a Western city’ said Herzog. Michael (2008) summarises that this structure “defines an intermediate space between the plaza and the field, the randomness of everyday life and the rituals of performance”. During the first athletic trials, that mood of exuberance was very evident, people took possession of the entire complex in the stadium. The architects want the stadium’s ground-level concourse to remain open to the public after the Olympic, allowing pedestrians to walk through the crisscrossing columns and look into the empty of the stadium. This vision of the stadium as a gigantic social organism is underscored by the architects’ plans for the building’s future (Nicolai, 2008).

Economic power

Many people have seen the stadium as a clear architectural statement, to state the global ambitions of it as the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Ruskin (2001) believes that all architecture essentially falls into two categories which are beauty and power and the size of a building adds a certain degree of nobleness to the building like he said, “mass and weight of a building is what makes a great structure”. The scale and ambition of the project is an unmistakable voice of China’s national pride, just have to look at where it has been built can people understand how important it is to China. It spreads over 28000 acres right at the end of the axis which extends from the Temple of Heaven to the Forbidden City. “Nothing could be more rigorous”, said Michael (2008). There were voices that saying the focus was only on August, to confirm Beijing’s status as a modern, global city to the entire world. The success of what China has built for the Olympics is not ultimately measured by how the appearance of these buildings during the Games but by the kind of shift they could bring to the city. (The New Yorker, 2008: 78) Pieprz (2008) explains that the consideration of the long-term use of the site is essential. ‘We needed a plan that could accept other civic, cultural, recreational, and commercial uses, so the place would become a major destination,’ Pieprz said,’You are making a city, not a spatial extravaganza that will be interesting just for sixteen days’.

Whether this Olympics driven by image or by sensitive urban planning has become an issue. The façades reveal the significant role of ornament as urban portraits, as well as the embodiment and extension of power (Balık & Allmer, 2015). The visual properties is nature of steel buildings which form its social implication and buildings like this levels of creativity and engineering are the most advanced in the world, only few countries would have the courage or the finance to attempt. The Chinese, right now, have plenty of both. The reason behind can be possibly put down to the large numbers of low-paid labours, the construction crew numbered nine thousand at its peak. There are reported to have been only £3 to £4.40 per day even though they spend longer working hours because the structure’s shape and complexity limited the extent of engineering efficiency. It could be argued that ornament in modern life may against the economy, a theory that Adolf (1908) put forward. The billions of dollars spent on the Olympic site are only a small amount of the money that has been invested in construction in Beijing since 2001. ‘The brightness of the Olympic halo gives Beijing’s relentless expansion a surface sheen, but it’s only a distract the city from other deeper priorities planning problems, such as air and water pollution and overcrowding.’ (The New Yorker, 2008: 78) The situation makes us rethink if the lack of ornamentation really will boost economy and well-being like Adolf (1908: 226) says, “Cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use”.

Politic reflection

Another popular debate is the impact ornament towards society as political power, in other words, autoeroticism. According to Murray (2008), the Bird’s Nest has been used as a political fodder by the Chinese government. “Herzog & de Meuron’s achievement is undeniable…they set out to create a sphere of resistance, and to gently redirect society’s course.” He said. The New York Times (2008) also argued that the National stadium does not seem to reflect China’s contemporary zeitgeist. Herzog (2008) admits architecture can play a role, having impacts on society, however, he denies it can transform a society. He said ‘this building (Nation Stadium) is made to play that role. It has the potential to be a place for the people.’ According to him, the building can be called as ” a Trojan Horse,’ making contemporary China a positive idea, so that people will go there. This ideological is quite a large issue in Herzog’s view, ‘You cannot misuse architecture ideologically’. Ai Weiwei (2007) announced in the Guardian, that he would boycott the opening ceremonies because he is ‘disgusted’ with the government’s ‘tendency to use culture for the purpose of propaganda.’ At a moment of high political and social tension across and beyond China, there is a voice that Herzog & de Meuron has created a symbol that demands to be read beyond sports or state power helps explain the building’s remarkable power (Clifford, 2008).

Conclusion:

The essay has critically discussed the various interpretations of ornament in architecture through the analysis of Beijing National Stadium. The load-bearing elements merge together with non-load-bearing ones, blurring the strict boundaries of structure and ornament, shows the new-born contemporary application of structural ornament as a mix element product. It elaborates the fact that ornament becomes necessary when it is integral to architecture as in the sense of structural ornament. (Jencks, 2011) I personally believe that the appropriate ornament is essential for architecture in any time of the human history as it inherits and reveals the wealth of human spiritual world and structural ornament can be seen as a milestone to the contemporary architecture. However, all architects should have a responsibility forwards society, ensure the design blend in its environment in both cultural and natural aspects that can offer a potential for public life because the application of ornament reflects variously into the history, economy, politics and society and will have effects on them. Taking The National Stadium as the example, it is unimpeachably brilliant in both conception and execution. But the development also questions the conflict between fashion development and human cost, which may even destroy the fabric of the city. Overall, noticing the economic, the stadium reaffirms architecture’s civilizing role in a nation that, standing as an immediately recognizable icon for an imaginative nation ready to strut on the world stage.