TATLIN NEWS #46

center of Beijing axis there is the Forbidden City, which seems to loose a lot of its attrac- tiveness even for tourists. On the Northern end of the axis there is Jingshan Park, surrounding the artificial hill which was created at the very place the last Ming emperor hanged himself. There are also the Drum towers and the bells that measured time. In 1958 when the Com- munists widened the Tiananmen Square until the southern gates of the Forbidden City, in its very center, on the same axis the Heroes Monu- ment was installed. And now at the other end of the axis they build the Olympic village. In contrast to the Heroes Monument that sym- bolized that the country is introvert, the Ol- ympic village demonstrates the extreme extra- vertness of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. And the projects, especially the Stadium and the nearby swimming pool by the Australian-based PTW Architects, already called the Water Cube, are there to demon- strate the country’s readiness to flow into the world society. The National Stadium, almost immediately after the architects won the international con- test organized by the Chinese authorities, be- came known as the Bird’s Nest. This most in- teresting thing is that the architects did not use this image in their initial concept – the name was given by the Chinese people, who as- similated the project at once. The name was chosen because in Chinese mythology this

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