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The Bird's Nest Stadium

The spectacular Bird's Nest stadium, hailed as the finest arena in the world and the centerpiece of the most expensive Olympics in history, is full of hidden symbolism.

In Chinese mythology, the sun is represented by a circle and the moon by a square, reflected by the shape of the bird's nest and the Water Cube aquatic centre opposite, reinforced when the venues are lit at night, red for the Bird's Nest and blue for the Water Cube.

The shapes also echo the Chinese symbols for male and female, and are built either side of the north-south axis road which runs in a perfect straight line for three miles through Beijing, centered on the Forbidden City.

Designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the stadium has a revolutionary design, which was chosen at the end of a six month long international competition.
It comprises an outer skeleton of 42,000 tons of steel, making it three times as heavy as the proposed London 2012 stadium, and an inner 'skin' of double-layered plastic which keeps out wind and rain and filters out UVA light.

It is designed to last for 100 years and withstand a force eight magnitude earthquake.