This model is created by others with Rhino. it's a parametric desgin and contains nurbs surfaces. Its not very accurate but you can still see the bumps of the structures. I tried to convert them into polymesh so the file also contains ploygons.
The Water Cube (水立方),[1][2][3][4] fully a.k.a. the National Aquatics Centre (国家游泳中心),[5] is a swimming center at the Olympic Green in Chaoyang, Beijing, China.
The Water Cube was originally constructed to host the aquatics competitions at the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. During the 2008 Olympics—where it hosted diving, swimming and synchronized swimming events—25 world records were broken in this facility.[6] In July 2010, a renovation of the facility was completed, which included the addition of a 12,000 m2 (130,000 sq ft) public water park. After renovation and adaptive configuration, the Water Cube also hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.[7]Architecture
In July 2003 the Water Cube design was chosen from 10 proposals in an international architectural competition for the aquatic center project.[8] The Water Cube was specially designed and built by a consortium made up of PTW Architects (an Australian architecture firm),[9] Arup international engineering group, CSCEC (China State Construction Engineering Corporation), and CCDI (China Construction Design International) of Shanghai.[10] The Water Cube's design was initiated by a team effort: the Chinese partners felt a square was more symbolic to Chinese culture and its relationship to the Bird's Nest stadium while the Sydney-based partners came up with the idea of covering the 'cube' with bubbles, symbolizing water. Contextually, the Cube symbolizes Earth, while the circle (represented by the elliptic stadium) represents heaven, a common motif in ancient Chinese art.[citation needed]
Comprising a steel space frame, it is the largest ETFE-clad structure in the world with over 100,000 m2 of ETFE pillows that are only 0.2 mm (1/125 of an inch) in total thickness.[11] The ETFE cladding, supplied and installed by the firm Vector Foiltec, allows more light and heat penetration than traditional glass, resulting in a 30% decrease in energy costs.[11] This choice was made in view of Beijing's goal of presenting a fully green Olympic Games, with zero net growth in total carbon emissions.[12] Likewise, the venue was also designed to capture and recycle 80% of the water falling on the roof or lost from the pools.[13]
The outer wall is based on the Weaire–Phelan structure, a structure devised from the natural pattern of bubbles in soap lather.[14] In the true Weaire–Phelan structure the edge of each cell is curved in order to maintain 109.5 degree angles at each vertex (satisfying Plateau's rules), but of course as a structural support system each beam was required to be straight so as to better resist axial compression. The complex Weaire–Phelan pattern was developed by slicing through bubbles in soap foam, resulting in more irregular, organic patterns than foam bubble structures proposed earlier by the scientist Kelvin.[10] Using the Weaire–Phelan geometry, the Water Cube's exterior cladding is made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles, some as large as 9.14 meters (30 ft) across, with seven different sizes for the roof and 15 for the walls.[15]
The structure had a capacity of 17,000 during the games.[11] It also has a total land surface of 65,000 square meters and covers a total of 32,000 m2 (7.9 acres).[11] Although called the Water Cube, the aquatic center is really a rectangular box (cuboid) 178 meters (584 ft) square and 31 meters (102 ft) high.[15] The building's popularity has spawned many copycat structures throughout China.[16] For example, there is one-to-one copy of the facade near the ferry terminal in Macau – the Casino Oceanus by Paul Steelman.
STL (Stereolithography, filesize: 670 KB), STP (STEP, filesize: 3.26 MB), FBX (Autodesk FBX, filesize: 10.4 MB), MA (Autodesk Maya, filesize: 1.15 MB), 3DM (Rhinoceros 3D, filesize: 8.42 MB)
