With the skies in Beijing looking gray and smoky from all that smog, at least theres something to look forawrd to when it comes to the Olympics. With the new Olympic swimming venue. Enough landscapers to fill a green army have been swarming over this city in recent weeks, sticking rows of saplings in traffic medians and rolling out fresh sod seemingly by the mile. If they've been visibly laboring -- there is no deadline more solid than an Olympic deadline, after all, and it gets pretty sticky in Beijing this time of year -- there is also something symbolically relaxed about the work they're doing. Organizers were careful, however, not to make too many changes to the main architectural icons of these Games: Herzog & De Meuron's National Stadium, known as the "Bird's Nest," and the so-called Water Cube, by the Australian firm PTW, which will hold the swimming and diving events. They never lost sight of the fact that the two buildings are sure to star in worldwide television coverage of the Games, taking up the role that Salt Lake City's Mormon Temple and the main stadium in Athens, with a new roof by Santiago Calatrava, played in recent Olympiads. The Bird's Nest and the Water Cube also suggest the huge civic and urban-planning importance that ruling-party officials in Beijing attach to these Olympics. The buildings sit astride a new boulevard tracing the same north-south axis that bisects Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City -- the most significant axis in any Chinese city.
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