The Beijing National Stadium, also known as the National Stadium,[1] or the "Bird's nest" for its architecture is a stadium that is being built on the Olympic Green in Beijing, China for March 2008 completion.
It will host the main track and field competitions for the 2008 Summer Olympics
and as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. In 2002, Government
officials engaged architects worldwide in a design competition. Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron
collaborated with ArupSport and China Architecture Design &
Research Group to win the competition. Contemporary Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, is the Artistic Consultant for design.[2] The stadium will seat
as many as 100,000 spectators during the Olympics, but this will be
reduced to 80,000 after the games. It has replaced the original
intended venue of the Guangdong Olympic Stadium[citation needed]. The stadium is 330 metres long by 220 metres wide, and is 69.2 metres tall. The 250,000 square metre (gross floor area) stadium is to be built with 36 km of unwrapped steel, with a combined weight of 45,000 tonnes. The stadium will cost up to 3.5 billion yuan (~423 million USD/ ~325 million EUR). The ground was broken in December 2003, and construction started in March 2004, but was halted by the high construction cost in August 2004 and continued again
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