Beijing National Stadium Case Study: Bird's Nest Steel and the Bowl (Herzog & de Meuron)

The Beijing National Stadium, the Bird's Nest, was designed by Herzog & de Meuron with Arup and the China Architectural Design & Research Group (CADG) as the main stadium of the 2008 Olympic Games, and completed on 28 June 2008. It is two buildings: a red concrete seating bowl, and around it a separate lattice of steel box members that is facade, roof and stair at once. This case study explains what each part of the lattice does, why the bowl stands apart, how the retractable roof and some steel were cut, and how the stadium has been used since.

Beijing National Stadium: the facts

Architect: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel (partners Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Harry Gugger, Stefan Marbach). Artistic advisor: Ai Weiwei.

Local design institute: CADG, Beijing, architect for construction (chief architect Li Xinggang).

Engineers: Arup (Hong Kong and ArupSport): sports architecture, structure, services, fire, acoustics and lighting, to preliminary design.

Client: National Stadium Co. Ltd, formed by a CITIC-led consortium and Beijing's state assets company.

Location: Olympic Green, north Beijing, near the city's central axis.

Years: competition 2002 to 2003; groundbreaking 24 December 2003; completed 28 June 2008.

Size: site 202,900 m²; floor area 258,000 m²; 8 levels. 91,000 seats for the Games, 80,000 planned after.

Status: open for events and tours. Not a UNESCO site.

Where to see the real drawings. The free Arup Journal 1/2009 special issue has sections through the bowl, plans of every level and the roof geometry; it is the main source here. The Herzog & de Meuron project page has the architects' text. Our diagrams are schematics, not copies. To turn sources like these into sheets, see how to do an architecture case study.

The brief and the client

The brief asked for the 2008 track and field venue with a 100-year life afterwards for athletics and football: 100,000 seats for the Games (later cut to 91,000 by the client), 80,000 in legacy mode, a retractable roof, and resistance to a major earthquake. There was no business plan for after the Games, so the team kept the building adaptable, with room, for example, for a hotel inside the envelope (Arup Journal 1/2009, J Parrish, p. 8).

All 13 competition schemes went on public show in Beijing in March 2003, and public votes counted alongside the jury's. Arup's timetable dates the jury decision to 25 March 2003, though its introduction says the competition was won in April. A separate tender chose a CITIC-led consortium as owner, and the design contract was signed in early December 2003 (T Choi and M Kwok, p. 5). CADG's Li Xinggang told Architectural Record he urged the Swiss architects, at their first meeting in 2003, away from the delicate facades they were known for (Alex Pasternack, July 2008). For the competition side, see how to win an architecture competition.

Site and context

The stadium is the centrepiece of the 1,135 ha Olympic Green, masterplanned by Sasaki Associates. Its own site is a nearly flat quadrangle of about 20.4 ha; the ground rises gently from the north-east roads to a plinth about 5.3 m higher, which meets the main concourse (Arup, p. 5). The architects describe plinth and stadium merging like "a tree and its roots", with slate paths, sunken gardens and bamboo groves around it.

Beijing National Stadium design concept and inspiration

The starting point was not a nest. Arup's engineers write that the inspiration was Beijing's crackle-glazed pottery and veined scholar stones; Ai Weiwei then sketched a bird in a tree, panels gave way to continuous lines, and locals coined "Bird's Nest" while the entries were on show (S Burrows and M Simpson, p. 16).

The architects call the stadium "a new kind of public space for Beijing" and say "Façade and structure are identical" (Herzog & de Meuron). Restaurants, suites and toilets are self-contained units, so the envelope can stay open and naturally ventilated. The team also ruled out masts, arches and stair cores: the roof wraps tight around bowl and concourses, and the stairs are part of the facade.

Beijing National Stadium floor plan and zoning

The stadium was designed inside out, from the bowl. ArupSport ran 33 parametric versions to suit athletics and football, and cantilevered the middle tier so its front 15 rows sit over the lower tier, bringing fans closer to a football pitch. The temporary Games seats went mainly to the rear of the top tier, so the outside form never changes (J Parrish, pp. 9 to 10).

Schematic plan of the Beijing National Stadium: an outer elliptical steel ring with 24 column trusses marked around it, an open concourse gap, a pink concrete seating bowl split by six movement joints into separate segments, a dashed roof opening over the bowl, and the running track and field in the centre, with notes on spans, segment lengths and storey heights — The steel lattice and the concrete bowl are separate structures: the bowl is six independent buildings inside a ring of 24 column trusses. Diagram: MOA

The plan works in rings: field and track, the bowl with floors behind it, open concourses, then the steel. Arup's level plans zone the floors by user: spectators, athletes, media and broadcast, the Olympic family, sponsors and operations (pp. 12 to 13). The bowl is seven storeys (51 m) on the east and west sides and five (45 m) at the ends, which gives the roof its saddle shape (T Choi and T Lam, p. 32).

Beijing National Stadium section and structural system

The key decision was to separate bowl and roof. A moving roof needs a stable platform, and each part is simpler to design for earthquakes with its own stability system. So the steel roof is one structure with no movement joints, and the bowl is six separate concrete buildings, 120 m to 150 m long, with 200 mm joints between them. They share only the pile foundation (pp. 16 and 34).

Schematic half section through the stadium from the outer facade to the field centre: a leaning steel facade curving into a 12 m deep roof truss with an ETFE skin on top and a PTFE ceiling below, a gap holding concourses and stairs, a stepped concrete bowl with a cantilevered middle tier, air arrows entering low and leaving under the roof, and bored piles reaching a gravel layer about 38 m down — In section, the bowl stands free inside the steel; the two meet only at the pile foundation, and air moves in low and out under the roof. Diagram: MOA

The concrete bowl

Each segment stands on concrete frames and two lift cores. Terraces are precast L-shaped units on raking beams 1.0 m to 1.2 m deep, and columns at the back lean to echo the facade. Bored piles of 800 mm to 1,000 mm reach a gravel layer about 38 m down (pp. 32 to 33).

The steel lattice: what each member does

The lattice looks random, but Arup sorts it into three kinds of member (pp. 16 to 17 and 20):

Primary: 24 column trusses, each two inclined trusses and a diamond-shaped vertical merging into one element at the base, carrying 12 m deep roof trusses. Arup calls the whole a three-dimensional "portalised" space truss.
Secondary: facade members that cut the big panels down to sizes the cladding can span.
Stairs: stairs to the top tier, built into the facade, whose lines run on over the roof.

Four panels of the same facade strip: the first highlights the primary members, two V-shaped column trusses with diamond verticals and the roof chord; the second highlights secondary members that subdivide the panels; the third highlights two low stair lines with treads; the fourth shows all members in the same grey and thickness so the layers cannot be told apart — Primary, secondary and stair members do different jobs, but all wear the same 1.2 m box profile, which is why the lattice reads as random. Diagram: MOA

Secondary members must not look smaller than primary ones, so every facade member keeps a 1.2 m box profile as it twists over the saddle (J Parrish, p. 14). Arup set out the geometry so even the most twisted box is made of flat plates cut and rolled. The team modelled the stadium in CATIA, built full-scale mock-ups, and tested 1:2.5 scale nodes at Tsinghua and Tongji universities (pp. 18 to 22).

Earthquake design

Beijing has moderately high seismicity; the 1976 Tangshan earthquake caused severe damage in the city. Ductile detailing would have needed box walls about 70 mm thick, adding weight and seismic force. Arup instead used performance-based design: primary members stay elastic or nearly so in the rare "level 3" earthquake, while secondary members may be severely damaged. An expert panel endorsed the design in May 2004 (X Duan and G Ho, pp. 24 to 27).

The retractable roof and the cost cuts

The retractable roof, two panels parting over the field, was taken to an advanced scheme and then dropped in June 2004, "due both to the rising cost of steel and political pressures to keep the Olympic budget under control" (J Lyle, p. 28). Arup notes the stadium's own cost was tracking its estimate; the Games budget overall had to be cut (p. 19).

The redesign enlarged the roof opening and used less steel. Some top chords that cannot be seen from the plaza shrank from 1.2 m to 1.0 m square; facade members stayed at 1.2 m (p. 21). Site work paused while the roof was revised.

Beijing National Stadium materials and construction

Steel: box members painted light grey against the red concrete bowl. A Trimble case study on the steel detailing gives 42,000 tonnes after the redesign, down from 45,000 (Trimble); we did not find this figure in Arup's or the architects' accounts.
Roof skins: about 1,000 transparent ETFE panels on top (about 38,000 m²) keep rain off; about 800 translucent PTFE panels below (about 53,000 m²) form the acoustic ceiling. The layers are about 13 m apart (T Choi, p. 36).
Concrete: in situ frames and cores, precast terraces.

The primary trusses were lifted panel by panel onto 78 temporary supports, joined at height, and then released. Milestones: bowl structure 15 November 2005, main trusses 31 August 2006, supports removed 17 September 2006, completion 28 June 2008 (pp. 22 and 48).

The Beijing National Stadium seen from a paved path across a lawn on a clear evening: a long, low oval of grey steel members crossing at many angles, with the red-painted concrete bowl and its stairs visible behind the lattice — National Stadium, Beijing, by Herzog & de Meuron with Arup and CADG, photographed in 2009: the grey steel lattice wraps the red concrete bowl, which shows through the open facade. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Size: the numbers differ. Arup gives the roof as spanning 313 m x 266 m and rising to 60 m; Trimble gives 332.3 m x 297.3 m and 69.2 m high. These are probably different measures, but no source we opened explains the gap.

Light, climate and services

The bowl is naturally ventilated: air enters low, around entrances, and leaves through vents about 4 m above the top seats. Arup admits a limit: with no low vents permanently open, air movement over the seats is much reduced, like a cave with one opening against a tunnel open at both ends (L Shiu, p. 42). Its CFD study for a typical August day predicted roof steel at 47°C; openings in the outer membrane were enlarged, and most seats then rated comfortable for a stadium, apart from some hot zones (R Yin, p. 39).

Ground source cooling: over 200 double U-pipes, 100 m deep, under the pitch feed 1,500 kW of chillers (p. 41).
Rainwater: six buried tanks (five of 2,700 m³, one of 1,000 m³); one day's design catch, about 12,750 m³, covers about 40 days of non-potable use (p. 42).

Reception, cost and use after 2008

The stadium won the 2009 RIBA Lubetkin Prize; jury chair Sunand Prasad said it would "remain amongst the most memorable emblems of 2008" (Dezeen, 15 July 2009).

Cost figures disagree, and we found no official final account:

$423 million (Architectural Record, July 2008).
$220 million, from the stadium's deputy general manager, who said repayment could take 30 years (Associated Press, 25 August 2008).
$480 million, with upkeep of $11 million a year (Louisa Lim, NPR, 10 July 2012).

The legacy question the retractable roof was meant to answer came back. NPR reported in 2012 that visitors had halved in early 2011, per state media, and that Beijing's Guo'an football club had not made the stadium its home. It later hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, and opened a walkthrough and rooftop skywalk to the public from 1 October 2022 (Xinhua, 3 October 2022). Our CCTV Headquarters case study, also in Beijing with Arup, is being added to this series.

What designers in India can take from it

Our reading, not lessons the designers stated.

Split big structures into parts that stand alone. For a stadium or convention hall in one of India's higher seismic zones, ask the engineer early whether roof and floors should be separate structures, and draw the joints from the first sketch.
Give a "random" pattern a hierarchy. If a facade or jaali screen is also structure, agree with the engineer which members carry load and which only subdivide.
Give open buildings a way in and a way out. A semi-open hall or stand in a hot Indian city needs low inlets and high outlets; test airflow before the envelope is fixed. For sports and public building theses, see our B.Arch thesis topics by typology.
Write the after-use into the brief. Ask the client for an operator, events and running costs before the form is fixed.

Visiting the Beijing National Stadium

The official site lists tour hours of 10:00 to 22:00 (last entry 21:00), with changes posted around concerts (National Stadium). Its English tickets page describes a tour of the main halls, the aerial walkway on the roof and the torch viewing platform, booked on 400-600-2008 (Tickets). Check the site before you go; the exterior is open to view from the Olympic Green.

FAQ

Who designed the Beijing National Stadium?

Herzog & de Meuron of Basel (partners Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Harry Gugger and Stefan Marbach), with Ai Weiwei as artistic advisor, Arup as engineer and sports architect, and the China Architectural Design & Research Group as the local design institute.

When was the Beijing National Stadium built?

The design competition ran from 2002 to 2003, with the jury decision on 25 March 2003. Groundbreaking was on 24 December 2003, the main steel trusses were complete by 31 August 2006, and the stadium was completed on 28 June 2008, before the Games that August.

What is the Beijing National Stadium made of?

A reinforced concrete bowl of frames, cores and precast terraces, inside a separate lattice of steel box members, mostly 1.2 m square in section. The roof has an ETFE weather skin on top and a PTFE acoustic ceiling below.

Why is it called the Bird's Nest?

Local people gave it the nickname while the competition entries were on display in Beijing in 2003, according to Arup. The design was inspired by crackle-glazed pottery and veined scholar stones; the nest image followed when Ai Weiwei sketched a bird in a tree.

What is the capacity of the Beijing National Stadium?

91,000 seats during the 2008 Games, including temporary seats mainly at the back of the top tier. The brief set 80,000 seats for legacy mode after the Games.

See how architects in India present their own buildings: explore projects by MOA members.

Sources

The Arup Journal 1/2009, Burrows, S., Choi, T., Kwok, M., Parrish, J., Simpson, M., Lam, K., Lam, T., Duan, X., Ho, G., Lyle, J., Yin, R., Shiu, L. et al.: The Beijing National Stadium special issue (PDF) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Herzog & de Meuron: 226 National Stadium (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Architectural Record, Alex Pasternack: National Stadium, July 2008 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Architectural Record: National Stadium project portfolio (credits and contractors) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Trimble: Olympic Stadium, Bird's Nest (steel detailing case study) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Dezeen, Zaynab D. Ziari: National Stadium in Beijing wins RIBA Lubetkin Prize, 15 July 2009 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Associated Press via HeraldNet: Beijing prepares for future of Olympic venues, 25 August 2008 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
NPR via GBH News, Louisa Lim: China's post-Olympic woe: how to fill an empty nest, 10 July 2012 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Beijing Municipal Government (Xinhua): Walkthrough tour offered to public in dual-Olympic venue National Stadium, 3 October 2022 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
National Stadium: official site and Tickets (English) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Wikimedia Commons: Copyright rules by territory: China (freedom of panorama) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)