Delivering the Beijing National Aquatics Center

The Beijing National Aquatics Center played a key role in the 2008 Olympics. It was a ground-breaking project in many ways, with its highly complex and irregular polyhedron steel space frame clad with ethylene tetrafluoroethylene membrane pillows – designed to resemble a ‘water cube’ – setting new standards for design and construction technology. This paper provides an overview of the innovative design and explains how the concept of ‘on-site further design’ was formally developed to help deliver it.