The National Aquatics Centre in Beijing, China - known as “The Water Cube” - for obvious reasons, is now complete. The Water Cube will feature aquatic events for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The building’s structural design, which is based on the natural formation of soap bubbles to give a random, organic appearance, used research undertaken by Weaire and Phelan (professors of physics) into how soap bubbles might be arranged in an infinite array.
To bring the design to life, the individual bubbles were incorporated into a plastic film and tailored like a sewing pattern. An entire section is pieced together and then put into place within the structure. There are interior and exterior films, and the film was then inflated in-situ.
Arup is the consultancy company that designed the project.
Photos of the exterior during construction:
Photos of the interior during construction
The building was used in Janary 2008 for the first time.
Photos after completion and during the first swim meet:
Stunning use of materials and it’s quite amazing how close the finished product is to the original artist’s rendition.
These fantastic photos were taken by Xiaming - pay him a visit over at flickr - he has more 
nice!