A Boston-based architectural firm, Sasaki Associates, has designed a park and sports complex in North Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
BBC News Online reports that according to the plan, the Olympic Green project will transform an area of Beijing double the size of New York’s Central Park or Paris’ Versailles Palace.
The plan includes a lake in the form of a dragon which snakes through the site, an 80,000-seat stadium, venues for basketball and swimming, a large conference centre and a large park, landscaped with hills as well as water, leading down a huge central avenue pointing to the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing.
Dennis Peiprz, one of the chief designers of the plan, told BBC News Online that they wanted to ensure that the site could be put to effective use after the Olympics were over – in contrast to Sydney, where the Olympic village was proving something of a white elephant.
He also explained that the design was planned to incorporate the stages of Chinese civilization, starting in the forest park, with squares every 1,000 metres marking a new era in Chinese thought and development.
According to BBC News Online the site would be linked by a monorail and new mass transport lines that would be built by the city authorities, and there would be new museums, hotels and mixed residential development on the edge of the site.
Although the plans have been accepted by the Beijing 2008 organizing committee and approved by Beijing’s city planners as the official design for the site, the designers are waiting for approval from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which is trying to arrange the construction of the various stadiums and other venues by private sector firms.
The Chinese authorities are hoping that the private sector will pay for 75 per cent of construction costs and are offering each firm a bundled project which would include some more commercially viable office and hotel development.
