Making Waves

APM Overseas Project of the Year Award winner, the Water Cube in Beijing, successfully combined a record-breaking Olympic swimming pool with a truly inspirational and enduring design for the Chinese people.

The venue amazed visitors and inspired athletes at the 2008 Olympic Games hosting swimming, diving and water polo events. Twenty-five world records were set in what is now the fastest pool in the world. Great Britains Rebecca Adlington became a double Olympic champion, and Michael Phelps set a new Olympic landmark with eight gold medals. But the real achievement was that the National Aquatics Centre, also known as the Water Cube, was ever built in the first place.

The objectives of the Beijing Municipal Government for the Aquatics Centre were simple; it wanted the best Olympic swimming venue that would then become a popular and well-used leisure and training facility after the Games. It also wanted to spend no more than US$100m before the Olympics and US$10m for its conversion to legacy mode.

The Olympic requirements included a 50m competition pool, a 33m diving pool and a 50m warm up pool. The main pool hall was to have 17,000 seats and the whole facility had to accommodate everything required for an Olympic operational overlay. Following the games, the main pool hall was to be reduced to 7,000 seats with other facilities added in order to make the Aquatics Centre a viable long term legacy. Construction was to start before the end of 2003 and to be completed at least six months before the Olympics to allow a sufficient period for trial competitive events.

Right from the outset, the Arup, PTW Architects, and China Construction Design Institute (CCDI) team agreed that the Aquatics Centre design should portray the way in which humanity relates to water, and spent half of the available design competition period labouring to develop a winning idea with a wave shaped roof depicting the power of the surf.

It was only with the unveiling of Herzog & de Meuron and Arups spectacular glowing Birds Nest design for the National Stadium that the team decided to risk everything and completely change their thinking just four weeks before the competition deadline.

In an emergency design meeting facilitated and mediated by Arup, the team members unanimously agreed to throw the initial wave shaped building into the bin a remarkable and difficult moment considering the time and emotional investment that had been spent developing what was in itself a high quality solution. At the same meeting, the team agreed the component parts of the Water Cube concept, which would sit along-side the National Stadium in yin yang harmony, a key concept in Chinese culture. From the planning work already carried out on the earlier competition concepts we knew the entire square site was needed to accommodate the clients requirements, effectively fixing a square footprint for the building. It was then agreed that a cube concept would appeal to the typical Chinese way of understanding beauty a subtle, thought-provoking design representing the beauty and serenity of calm, untroubled water, explained Rob Leslie-Carter, principal, Arup Project Management.

The final piece of the jigsaw was provided by Arup Fellow Tristram Carfrae, who researched how space could be partitioned into cells of equal volume with the least area of surface between them in much the same way as bubbles form in foam. The recurrent natural structural geometry was used to create the Water Cube concept, and give it its unique external appearance.

The race was now on to articulate the idea in a way that would inspire the competition judges and voting public. In the final three weeks of the competition, the Water Cube went from a three dimensional computer generated model, with a script based on original foam bubble theory, to a physical model using Rapid Prototyping Techniques. This was the first time such a complex physical model has been made this way.

The gamble paid off and the new design proved an instant hit, receiving over a million votes more than 10 times the votes for its nearest rival.

Cutting edge

But this was only the start. The competition concept had enormous wow-factor, and was based on solid engineering principles, but many of the concepts were so cutting edge that multiple streams of research and development were still needed to prove the design both internally and to the project design partners, as well as sell technical aspects to the Chinese approval authorities.

Recognising the scale and complexity of the challenge, Arups project management team led two days of workshops with key design team members to produce a roadmap for the project. Based on previous project work at Londons Heathrow Terminal 5, the team introduced an interface management strategy which divided component parts of the Water Cube into volumes defined by physical and time boundaries, and then captured it in a project volume register.

The principle began working very well internally, and was quickly expanded to include external interfaces where information from other teams or a second or third party could be easily assimilated. These external interfaces were classified as either: physical; functional; organisational and operational.

This process quickly became one of the most important functions during the design phase where the elimination of mistakes at interfaces (eg missing or wrongly placed ducts, service clashes) meant the documentation handed over to the Chinese design partners for detailing was far more robust and generated far fewer queries.

This structured approach also had a positive effect on the final build costs, leading to a reduction of nearly 10% on the original estimate, and went a long way to strengthening relations between different stakeholders.

The Water Cube was a unique project brought about by a unique set of circumstances. Much more than just a swimming pool, it came to represent Beijings and Chinas aspirations to secure its place on the world stage. It also reflected a genuine attempt to bring East and West together under one major project.

A testament to its success was evident in the final build, which was delivered from competition vision to breathtaking reality, on time and on budget in perfect harmony.