TATLIN NEWS #46

The arc | Beijing, china | herzog & de Meuron | National Stadium | photos by Iwan Baan | text by evgenia Bakhturova Instead of writing about the National Sta- dium in Beijing I want to write about how this city has changed. In fact the stadium can be considered the symbol of this change in this case. At the last Venetian biennale Rem Kool- haas formulated several theses that concern- ing the Persian Gulf developments. Still Bei- jing was a pioneer of such changes and it is yet unknown what is going to be there in the Gulf. Among the predictions Koolhaas voiced the predictions about the city as a stable so- ciety of the people, about the changes in the structuring algorithm and infrastructure crea- tion, about the population density and about the ‘public’ and ‘private’ definitions. And now all these predictions came true: Beijing strives to become a member of the “first world” cit- ies club, and the field of architecture is no ex- ception. To understand what the Olympic village construction meant for the Chinese capital, it is worth considering where it is situated in the city. During the first construction boom which happened 600 years ago, the city was replanned. The architects created the North- South axis and placed the city on both sides. It was based on the same principle as Paris, which is spread along the Louvre – Tuileries – Triumphal Arch – Champs- É lys é es axis. In the

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