Bird’s Nest National Stadium

Bird’s nest ceramics?
Q: Commissioned for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finished at 428 million dollars, under the 500 million dollars budgeted, the stadium looks like a bird’s nest. Am I being a little facetious about its appearance?

A: Not at all. The designers looked for a Chinese ceramic motif, a vessel that would hold people. And in China, bird’s nest is an expensive dish for a festive occasion. It’s a rather auspicious design.

Q: Who were the designers?

A: Swiss firm, Herzog and de Meuron. Chinese artist Ai We Wei was a consultant but he withdrew his name after he learned local people had lost their homes by the project.

Q: This bird’s nest design. Looks like random steel girders.

A: Exactly. They were to hide the pillars for the retractable roof. But that was sacrificed in the interests of safety.
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Voice-over
There actually are Chinese ceramics which feature a random pattern of lines. But it’s decoration, rather than structure. This post-modern design structure recalls a decorative design of antiquity.
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A hundred thousand swifts

Outside a disused shophouse, Aerial is intrigued by swooping swifts.

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Aerial: Is it a swallow?
 Azmera: It’s a swift. Every morning at 6 they fly out, and every evening at 6 they return. A hundred thousand of them.
Aerial: A hundred thousand. They go in and out where?
Azmera: See that window? A hundred thousand of them squeeze through that twice a day.
Aerial: Don’t they bump each other?
Azmera: They have radar. Like bats.
Aerial: Why do you keep them?
Azmera: I harvest their nests. The nests are made of swift saliva. Sell them to Hong Kong for bird’s nest soup.
Aerial: Don’t the swifts mind you taking their nests?
Azmera: I take the disused nests. They only live for a year.
Aerial: They die in their nests?
Azmera: Never seen a dead swift. Nobody knows where swifts die.

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Voice-over
Like the cleaning of a swift nest to prepare for sale, Aerial reveals the surprises of swifts asking a what, a where, a how, a why and then a moral probe followed by Azmera’s justification. 

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