In Shougang, west of Beijing, stands a gigantic ski ramp: Big Air. A mega infrastructure built exclusively for the Beijing Winter Olympics. But what most attracts the attention of the environment is not the imposing slope, but the landscape behind her. Accustomed to seeing snow-capped mountains and forests, viewers around the world have been taken aback by the industrial backdrop and steel mills that adorn the area.
Actually, Shougang used to be an industrial wasteland, home to the former Shougang Steelworks, an iron ore production and storage center that pumped noxious fumes into the atmosphere for decades. Now, the only things launched into the sky are the world’s best skiers and snowboarders, flipping and acrobatically spinning their way to Olympic glory.
Honestly, what are we even doing here. pic.twitter.com/vtj7FarSVv
— Michael Antonelli (@BullandBaird) February 8, 2022
The Beijing landscape was once dominated by a sprawling iron and steel factory. The capital city of China decided to close it about a decade ago, except they didn’t shoot it down. “It feels pretty dystopian to have some kind of nuclear facility as the backdrop for this Big Air ski event,” tweeted LindsayMpls.
Feels pretty dystopian to have some kind of nuclear facility as the backdrop for this Big Air skiing event 🥴 pic.twitter.com/l0nIvgX5Pv
— Lindsay (@LindsayMpls) February 7, 2022
Steel became not only an important industry for China, but in a way became a symbol, an embodiment of socialist command planning. But he was also an embodiment of modernity. But as China’s state-planned economy gave way to a more liberal one, Shougang continued to lose money. In 2010, Shougang officially closed in Beijing. The pollution and noise were too great. And the government had a choice: demolish or clean up and renovate. They chose the latter.
Huge concrete silos where workers once stored metal ores and coal are now sleek office spaces, and other parts have been converted into snow making facilities. They now have facilities snowboard freestyle and a giant ski jump for the Winter Games.
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A key selling point at this year’s Winter Olympics is the organizers’ claim to be the “green” Games, the games of “sustainability and legacy.” It is a phrase that appears regularly in documents about the competition. The sustainability aspect stems from the organizer’s laudable goal of being 100% carbon neutralusing carbon dioxide refrigeration techniques, low-carbon transport options and the use of existing facilities from the last Games.
But green doesn’t always mean planting trees and storing carbon. Sustainability comes in many forms, including the regeneration of brownfield sites in the city center. One of the most spectacular venues in these Games is a case study of urban regeneration. Eileen Gu from China praised the place after qualifying for the final: “The place is fantastic. Look around you, there is no snow anywhere else, but somehow when you are skiing this jump you feel like you are in a glacier somewhere.
this pic goes hard tho pic.twitter.com/t98u8ashtT
— milksteaks (@Artsypharts) February 8, 2022
The venue’s chief architect, Zhang Li, explained that the athletes were originally going to come out of one of the cooling towers. “We tried to put the elevator inside one of the cooling towers so you would see the athletes come out of nowhere at the start of their jumps,” Professor Zhang told Olympic News Service.
the towers are a reminder of industrial heritage of the site, which has the potential to become as iconic as other sporting industrial relics, such as the Oval Gasometer in the UK. And they believe the move to the former industrial site is a great example of building landmarks in areas of industrial legacy.
With Shougang Group Co., Ltd., we worked on the largest landmark urban regeneration in the world, Capital Steel Park. This century-old industrial steel facility is a host of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games with “Big Air Shougang,” a massive ski jump built for freestyle events. pic.twitter.com/kPlMqAOxxD
— Tishman Speyer (@tishmanspeyer) February 2, 2022
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The news
An industrial landscape as a backdrop for the Beijing Olympics: the visual contrast of the competitions
was originally published in
Magnet
by Albert Sanchis.