"Double Olympics" Chief Instructor Li Xinggang: Let the mountain and forest venues light up the ice and snow world
◎Reporter He Liang, intern reporter Du Peng
Standing on the highest point of the National Snowmobile Center and looking down, the track and interior buildings are hidden under the roof and seem to disappear.
The undulating National Snowmobile Center is built according to the mountain. The 1975-meter track is designed with 16 corners. The sunshade roof is erected on the track to protect the athletes and the track while minimizing the impact of energy consumption.
Li Xinggang, the chief designer of the Yanqing Division of the Beijing Winter Olympics, also designed many trails and pavilions on top of the sunshade roof, like a long veranda built along the mountain. When you walk on the trail, you can see the scenery of the mountains and forests. .
In Li Xinggang's view, in the overall design of the Yanqing Division, this roof walkway is one of the best gifts for the public.
Here, you can experience the speed and passion of the "F1 on Ice" event, as well as watch the "beautiful mountains" in the Yanqing Division.
Based on years of thinking about architecture and the environment, Li Xinggang formed the concept of "scenery geometry" - artificial and natural coexistence, the Winter Olympic venues do not snatch the brilliance of the entire landscape environment, but embellish between the landscape.
Another peak after crossing the "Bird's Nest"
In 2002, the world architects Herzog and de Meuron wanted to seek a collaborator who was familiar with Chinese culture and had an international vision to jointly complete the competition design of the main venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Li Xinggang stood out and became attached to the "Bird's Nest".
The design and construction of the project took more than 5 years to weave a stadium of Nuoda into a warm "bird's nest" with a branch-like steel mesh. The content and work of thousands of threads were woven into another in Li Xinggang's mind. "Bird's Nest".
At the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Li Xinggang seemed to have climbed a world peak, but after becoming the chief designer of the Yanqing Division of the Beijing Winter Olympics, huge pressure came to Li Xinggang as scheduled.
Although both are the world's top Olympic venues, the design and construction of the "Bird's Nest" and the National Snowmobile Center and Alpine Ski Center in the Yanqing Division are quite different.
Skiing events and sledding events should be designed according to the mountain terrain. There are no identical sledding venues and alpine skiing tracks in the world.
Li Xinggang has no experience in building a huge Winter Olympics competition area in a mountain environment.
The first difficulty is to come up with a design concept.
Ice and snow sports can especially reflect the scenes of human beings playing in nature. They all use mountain and forest venues. How to deal with the relationship between the function and the environment?
Li Xinggang proposed that the design concept of the Yanqing competition area is "mountain and forest venues, ecological Winter Olympics", and the venue group and the mountain and forest environment will be shielded, integrated and coexisted with each other, instead of building several highly iconic venues. At the same time, we must maximize the realization of the Winter Olympics. Ecology, environmental protection and sustainability in the competition area.
From 2015 to the present, the construction of the Yanqing Division has lasted 6 years.
From detailed investigation to scientific evaluation to specific practice, Li Xinggang has traveled all over the Haituo Mountain in the past few years.
Li Xinggang still remembers the first time he came to Haituo Mountain.
He and FIS experts took a helicopter to the top of Mount Haituo, and walked down the mountain to survey the site. Because of the high mountain and dense forest, there was no road on the mountain. In order to select the route for the ski course and understand the site environment, he spent a whole time from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain. day time.
In the early stage of design, there are several such experiences.
Especially in the severe winter period, under the low temperature of minus 40 degrees Celsius, because there are no commuting tools such as cable cars, the roads are very limited, the construction conditions are very difficult, and the workers live on the mountains.
In Li Xinggang's view, it was the "original efforts" of the design and construction personnel that realized the vision of building a "looming" Winter Olympics competition area in nature.
Build the world's only south slope track
"Snow Dragon" is the only snowmobile sledding track in China, the 17th track in the world and the third track in Asia that meets the Olympic competition standards.
The location of the track for the snowmobile sled race posed a great challenge to Li Xinggang.
According to tradition, the track of the bobsleigh center and other snow venues must be designed according to the terrain of the venue.
It is possible to avoid excessive artificialization and make the track fit with nature to the greatest extent possible.
The snowmobile sled track is exposed to the outside, and the sun exposure to the ice surface will make the ice surface soft and hard, affecting the sliding speed and safety.
However, the slopes of all the north-facing venues in the core area of Haituo Mountain are far greater than 20%, while the International Sports Organization stipulates that the slope of the snowmobile and sled track venues ranges from 15% to 18%, with a maximum of 20%. .
If the slope is too steep, it will pose a threat to the safety of athletes; if the slope is too slow, the competitiveness will not be reflected.
In the end, the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee submitted the site selection plan numbered S2 (Southward No. 2) to the International Olympic Committee and international sports organizations.
The track has an average gradient of 16%, which perfectly matches the requirements of the event.
More importantly, Li Xinggang's team also provided technical solutions to solve problems such as solar radiation that were envisaged at the beginning of the site selection.
The scheme is vividly called "turning the south slope into the north slope" - building a sunshade roof, designing artificial terrain, windproof backboard, etc., and constructing a terrain and climate protection system through a series of manual interventions, so that the area where the track is located is protected. Temperatures approach reasonable and energy consumption is minimized.
Today, a last resort site has created the unique "Snow Dragon", making it the only snowmobile sled track in the world built on the southern slope.
An expert from an international sports organization who came to the site for certification once said that in the future, other cities will no longer be restricted by the orientation of the venues for hosting the Winter Olympics. "Dragon" has contributed a wonderful Chinese solution to the international snowmobile sled race.
Design inspiration with the help of Chinese culture
2198 meters, the highest point of Xiaohai Tuo Mountain, is also the starting point of the Alpine Ski Center.
The alpine skiing event is called "the crown jewel of the Winter Olympics".
The alpine ski center of the Beijing Winter Olympics is called "Xue Feiyan". It is surrounded by mountains and forests. Seven long and narrow snow trails meander down from the top of the mountain, with a total length of 21 kilometers, including the technical trails, which is currently the highest in China. Graded ski tracks.
Inspired by the traditional mountain dwellings of Yunnan-Guizhou ethnic minorities - dry-lane architecture, Li Xinggang proposed and developed a low-intervention, reversible, and assembled alpine overhead platform system with his team.
The three-dimensional platforms are built on top of each other along the bottom of the hillside and valley. Only the steel structure is in point contact with the mountain surface, which minimizes the disturbance to the mountain forest environment.
"The platform system avoids the method of filling land to build a house, which not only keeps the topography of the mountain unchanged, but also obtains a lot of three-dimensional space. At the same time, all facilities are prefabricated in factories and assembled on site, which are of high quality and efficiency." Li Xinggang said that the Winter Olympics After the end, part of the platform can be dismantled according to operational needs to restore the terrain and environment of the mountain, so that the construction of the venue can be reversible, which is both economical and intelligent.
Different from traditional designs at home and abroad, Li Xinggang did not put the starting point of alpine skiing above the top of the mountain, but chose a sheltered place that was flush with the top of the mountain.
"The summit departure area of alpine skiing has withstood the strong winds above level 14 on the top of the mountain and the severe cold of minus 40 degrees Celsius. Among them, structural wind tunnel tests, special connection structures and other technological means have played an important role in resisting wind and cold, but more importantly The reason is that we embedded the 'Xuefeiyan' under the top of the mountain, and placed it in a direction sheltered from the wind, which is better than a building above the top of the mountain to achieve self-protection." Li Xinggang said.
This ingenious design is inspired by Li Xinggang's understanding of Chinese culture.
Li Xinggang explained that Chinese landscape painting pays attention to "white space", and the snow track seems to be the white space in the Xiaohaituo landscape in the Yanqing competition area, which complements each other.
He hopes that the large-scale construction of stadiums and the natural ecology will integrate and coexist, and ice and snow athletes will gallop in the quiet mountains and forests. The unique pursuit of beauty.