On November 25, 2013, in Hangzhou, the main stadium of the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center, located on the south bank of the Qiantang River, resembles the “Bird's Nest”. The main stadium can accommodate 80,000 spectators. At present, the installation of the exterior steel structure canopy is basically completed, and it is about to enter the interior decoration of water, electricity, pipelines, etc., and the project is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

This can be said to be another super “knockoff building” in China! Everyone knows that as an important venue for the Olympics, the Bird's Nest stadium built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics is not only a major project constructed when China hosted the Olympics, but has now also become a landmark building in the capital, Beijing. It is this large stadium, currently the only one in China shaped like a “Bird's Nest”, that unexpectedly has now been immediately followed by another one in Hangzhou! So it is a super “knockoff building”, because this knockoff Bird's Nest in Hangzhou is not a “small toy”, but a “big project” almost comparable to the Beijing Bird's Nest.

The Beijing “Bird's Nest” has a total construction area of 258,000 square meters, covers an area of 20.4 hectares, and has a height above ground of 69.21 meters. The entire building is shaped like an elliptical saddle, with the concrete structure divided into one basement level and seven above-ground levels, forming a three-tier bowl-shaped inclined stand that can accommodate 91,000 spectators. One account says 91,000 fixed seats and about 11,000 temporary seats. Meanwhile, the main stadium of the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center on the south bank of the Qiantang River, which resembles a “Bird's Nest”, can accommodate 80,000 spectators. Look, it differs from the Beijing Bird's Nest by only about ten thousand seats. Such a huge sports venue has unexpectedly been simply copied, becoming Hangzhou's “Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium”!

Nowadays, knockoff buildings have become rampant. Knockoff versions of Beijing's Tiananmen, the Shanghai China Expo Pavilion, and even some famous foreign buildings can be seen in China. Regarding the chaos of knockoff architecture in China today, industry experts have frequently pointed it out and criticized it. He Jingtang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in Guangzhou on November 27 that “knockoffs” and plagiarism are dangerous signals in the field of architecture. Architectural creation must have good concepts, avoid cities that all look the same, and innovate on the basis of inheriting China's excellent culture. Academician He pointed out: We can learn the concepts and ways of thinking that are constantly innovated at home and abroad, but we must not focus only on their specific forms and symbols. He emphasized that inheritance and innovation are always an eternal theme in the architectural field.

Academician He was the chief designer of the ShanghaiWorld Expo China Pavilion. Faced with the chaos of some “knockoff buildings” starting to “run rampant” in China, He Jingtang believes that this practice of blindly making fake antiques is very dangerous. Chinese architecture will lose its correct direction and countermeasures in complete Westernization or imitation, and will also lead to the weakening and marginalization of the discourse power of local architectural culture in the international arena.

Academician He Jingtang's words are worth deep thought by the architectural community. In China, among the more than 2 billion square meters of new buildings every year, whether copying the shapes and styles of domestic or foreign buildings, the original architecture-specific styles and culture of the city will be lost. Copying domestic ones will lose the local architectural culture and characteristics; copying foreign ones will lose the architectural cultural connotations unique to the nation. Architectural styles that make all cities look the same, or the Westernization of Chinese architecture, are indeed, as Academician He said, very dangerous.

The above brief discussion is intended to remind our architectural authorities to pay attention, and also to suggest that China's construction industry, especially architects, should establish a correct concept of architectural creation and return to architectural rationality. Architectural design should first consider providing a comfortable and livable environment, and fully apply new scientific and technological achievements to comprehensively improve building quality. At the same time, architectural forms should innovate on the basis of fully reflecting local characteristics and national features, and effectively curb the occurrence of blind, simple imitation and crude “knockoff” works.

　　Editor: Wu Yue