Beijing: Zheng Fang has been involved in the design of Olympic and Paralympic Games venues twice—the first time for Beijing 2008, and the second for Beijing 2022.
As Deputy Chief Designer of the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD), Zheng was in charge of the design of the National Speed Skating Oval, built right on the site of a temporary venue for shooting and field hockey competitions during Beijing 2008. That temporary venue was also designed by Zheng’s team.
“It is rare for an architect to design venues for two Olympic Games at the same location,” Zheng said. “We made it because Beijing is the first city ever to host both Olympic Summer and Winter Games. Many people have been involved in the construction for both the Games in the city.”
Although named after Beijing, the 2022 Games will actually be held in three competition zones: downtown Beijing; Yanqing District in Beijing’s northern suburbs; and Zhangjiakou, a city in Hebei Province neighboring Beijing. All the five venues for ice competitions are located in downtown Beijing.
In contrast to the other four ice venues that were renovated from existing buildings, the National Speed Skating Oval is the only ice venue that was built from scratch.
Sitting in the Beijing Olympic Park, also the location of the National Sports Stadium, nicknamed Bird’s Nest, and the National Aquatic Sports Center, known as Water Cube, the oval has its own nickname: the Ice Ribbon, because from outside it looks as if the building is twined with steel ribbons.
The opening and closing ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Games will be held at the Bird’s Nest, as they were at the 2008 Summer Games. The Water Cube has been transformed into an “Ice Cube” and will serve as the venue for curling, making it the first curling venue in the world converted from a swimming venue. The construction of the Ice Ribbon kicked off in January 2018. The inspiration for the design came from the speed skating competition that the venue will host. “The ribbons, made of steel, are like the tracks left by the skate blades of the athletes,” Zheng said. “There are a total of 22 ribbons, representing the year of 2022.” Engineers from BIAD made over 1,000 designs to choose from, wanting the design to be both good-looking and as environmentally friendly as possible. Their solution—a roof shaped like hyperbolic saddles that allowed the project to use only one quarter of the steel that would have been necessary for a traditional steel roof of the same size. On December 25, 2020, construction of the venue was completed. On January 22, it witnessed the production of ice using the world’s most advanced ice-making technology.
“Different from the ice venues of the previous Olympic Winter Games that used freon refrigerants for ice-making, four ice venues in Beijing used new refrigerants made of carbon dioxide,” said Ma Jin, who is in charge of the ice-making project in the National Speed Skating Oval. This new technology, with the least toxic and most eco-friendly natural refrigerants, can reduce carbon emissions to nearly zero, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is expected that this system will save over 40 percent in energy consumption compared with an ice rink with older systems. The heat generated in the ice-making process will be recycled for stadium heating, athlete showers, ice melting, dehumidification and other necessities for the stadium.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
