Kai Tak Sports Hub
Sport will play a major role at the redeveloped Kai Tak site. Jeanette Wang asks what wecan look forward to, and what we should avoid
When the Beijing Municipal Government invited bids to build the best Olympic swimming venue ever for the 2008 Games, the brief to architects was simple: give us a centre that meets the Olympic criteria for swimming, diving, water polo and synchronised swimming; that would be a popular and well-used leisure and training facility after the Games; and that costs no more than US$100 million.
The result, the now-iconic bubble-wrapped facility known officially as the National Aquatics Centre and nicknamed the Water Cube, was much more than the government asked for. The winning consortium's design included an indoor water park with an artificial beach and water rides - features that added about 40 per cent to the size of the building, driving its cost up to US$150 million.
"We took a huge risk," says architect John Pauline, one of the project's design leaders, "but if you build just an individual swimming building, it will not have any strong use after the Games, and it certainly won't make any money. So we added Beijing's largest indoor aquatic park to the building, which we knew was going to be the heart and soul once the Olympics had gone."
Following major renovations, the Water Cube reopened in August 2010 with a new lease on life: it's now used year-round and generates revenue, not only through sports but also cultural and entertainment events. It's doing much better than its neighbour - the National Stadium, or the Bird's Nest - which struggles to fill its 80,000 seats regularly - and is one of many examples of white elephant sporting venues round the world.
Pauline, the Hong Kong-based design principal for Hassell Architects, has a similar vision for the planned Kai Tak Multi-purpose Sports Complex. It can't just be a sports complex; it's got to have multi-functionality, mixing sport with retail and even residential aspects, he says.