Beijing Reborn

The transformation of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics is emerging as perhaps the most ambitious remake of any major world capital in history, short of the postwar reconstructions. The silhouettes of the spectacular new stadium and swimming center are already familiar worldwide, but they are set in a rebuilt urban core that startles return visitors. Lush new green spaces, swirling expressways, shopping arcades roofed with giant LED screens, a new downtown financial center plus a vastly expanded public transport system have all rapidly appeared. To some, the Olympic-driven metamorphosis evokes the remaking of Paris by Baron Haussmann between 1865 and 1887—a complete redesign of the city center, including the creation of the grand boulevards for which Paris is famous today.

For others, Beijing's radical rebuild smacks of totalitarian-power architecture, akin to the grandiose but unrealized blueprints of Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect. But Albert Speer Jr. disagrees. The younger Speer—also a prominent German architect—recently redesigned a central eight-kilometer-long strip running from the center of the Forbidden City north to the new Olympic green. Mandated by imperial feng shui masters, this has been Beijing's heart for centuries. Speer says his scheme is a paean to the city's tradition, not a power trip—despite being "bigger, much bigger" than his father's "megalomaniac" design for New Berlin.

However you characterize it, Beijing's rulers are now permitting ultramodern design of a type Maoists have long shunned as bourgeois or Western. Many of the new taboo-busting constructions are stunning gravity-defying structures designed by some of the world's top architects, as well as China's own young guns. Some have sparked unprecedented public debate about whether Beijingers should sacrifice its old charm for modern glitz and convenience—and at what cost. "[Architects] have introduced lots of things we didn't have and didn't do before," says designer Feng Keru, senior editor of the Chinese edition of Domus, the Italian architectural bible. As a result, she says, Beijing's recent edifice complex has triggered new standards for construction and engineering nationwide.

The Olympics will be a massive coming-of-age party for the world's newest economic superpower, as planned. But President Hu Jintao's administration is not just building an Olympic village; it is overseeing the creation of a dynamic new capital with "the pyramids of the 21st century," says Prof. Zhou Rong of Tsinghua University's architecture school. The problem is that, with the 2008 deadline looming fast, even Beijing can't quite control the pell-mell process of demolition and construction. The basic concern is how to balance costly environmental projects against the raw need for economic growth. The ruling Communist Party has long based its legitimacy on providing prosperity. But for several years now it's been struggling both to restrain construction spending in a dangerously hot economy and to redistribute income more fairly. The Olympic building program is clashing head-on with both goals, by concentrating Beijing's own spending in the wealthy capital and by inspiring every province to spend heavily on grandiose buildings, too.

The communist leaders are responding by trying to rein in the provinces. The contradiction is glaring. Tough new draft legislation on urban planning proposes stiff fines for property firms guilty of wasteful land use and other violations. In the spring, the Ministry of Construction blasted local governments for single-mindedly pursuing urban development and "vanity projects." It also warned the provinces against "blindly" hiring foreign architects who are "divorced from China's national conditions and pursue novelty, oddity and uniqueness," although this describes most of the architects redesigning Beijing. Many provincial leaders are taking this mixed message to mean "full speed ahead."

Locals have come to know the new projects by wry nicknames: the futuristic 90,000-seat National Olympic Stadium, with its massive external lattice of intertwined beams, is the "bird's nest." The equally stunning National Aquatics Center, a shimmering translucent block swathed in an energy-saving skin that looks like bubble wrap, is known as the "water cube." Then there's the "duck's egg," the National Opera House designed by French architect Paul Andreu: a titanium ovoid set near Tiananmen Square. And perhaps most breathtaking of all is the new headquarters designed by Rem Koolhaas's firm for the China Central Television corporation, or CCTV. The two 230-meter-high L-shaped towers lean into each other to form a vertiginous loop; local wags call it "trouser legs."