Ai Weiwei is a well renowned comtemporary artiest of China, he had collaborated with the Swiss firm to design the Beijing National Stadium. The stadium's ribbon of intersecting steel resembles how bird do their nest, hence the nick name "Bird's Nest"

When they design it, Wei said that they were "empty their mind to come up with the maximum in unification of aesthetic functions and actual needs", the stadium's outer ribbons of structural steel resemble the woven twigs of a bird's nest. The bird's nest, also represents the launch of a phoenix, bringing redemption. And for a rising power like China whose history, despite the nation's colossal population and size, includes numerous foreign invasions — that kind of signal is no accident (Architectureweek.com). The stadium was build with a budget of 2.6 billion yuan and stand at 70 meters high, 320 meters long and can hold nearly 100,00 people.

But then with the Olympics coming up, Wei has stayed away completely from the game, as he feels the government merely use it for their own propaganda rather than the natural process of going to democracy and freedom of speech among citizens.

Rather than show the world about "new" China with the One World, One Dream, Wei feels that it is still same old same old deep inside the government. "When I helped conceive Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium, I wanted it to represent freedom, not autocracy: China must change ... We must bid farewell to autocracy"

My take is that when he joins the team to design the stadium, he was hoping that China would become more open, as in reborn again like the phoenix, which steps up toward democracy and respect human right. That hope seems to be dashed, hence why he don't want to relate himself to his work the "Bird's Nest", which he filled it with hopes of freedom, but now it seem more like barb-wired nest to him.


Flora Chung, China's Olympic Crossroads: Birds nest designer Ai Weiwei on Beijing's "Pretend Smile", The New York Times.
http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/chinas-olympic-crossroads-birds-nest-designer-ai-weiwei-on-beijings-pretend-smile/

Brian Libby, Beijing's Bird Nest - Architecture, Architectureweek.com
http://www.architectureweek.com/2008/0917/building_3-2.html