The new stadium to be inaugurated on the 8th of August 2008 is woven of exactly as many 8-shaped lines as you can get to cross each other without completely losing the air in between. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron and engineered by Ove Arup & Partners, it is by far one of the most ambitious stadium designs of our time. The designers recently embarked with a vengeance on what they have described as 'subjective projects'. This is a highly ironic desire, considering that it was articulated by an office that acquired its reputation in the eighties with a series of very minimal and restrained interventions: first in their home town of Basel and then in a private art gallery in Munich. These projects prepared them for what followed soon after when they were selected to reshape the Tate Modern in London from the disused power station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. This conversion and addition is perhaps the most typical of the development of the “subjective project”. Paradoxically, it was the New Brutalism, which gave Herzog & de Meuron the currency to aggressively remodel themselves and adopt the new mantel of 'subjectivity'.

In a certain sense all of our endeavors originate in dreams. Or, as the Irish poet W.B. Yeats has put it: "in dreams begins responsibility." Yet, here in Beijing, it is the metaphor rather than the dream, which is over-determining the object. It belongs to the 'duck' type of projects, in which the building is made to look like what it resembles. Sometimes architecture thrives when the quality of the design transcends the intention, as we can easily recognize in Saarinen's TWA terminal at JFK airport. We know it is meant to be aerodynamic- and it is- but it is much, much more itself and therefore completely rewarding. Utzon's Sydney Opera House was inspired by the sails of ships and the wings of birds, but it appeared completely free of these connotations when it was designed and certainly free from any after image as it was conceived and built, and is therefore truly great. The echo of the movement of seawater and the trees in the woods in Alvar Aalto's oeuvre is never far, and yet they are always at a distance. By making these comparisons one is already complimenting the effort in Beijing.

Yes, it is, without doubt, a formidable achievement. Yet, as we are reminded every time we land in the Athens airport, the metaphor is a carrier, and the basket or the nest is a carrier as well. Here lies the snare: can one be carried by the power of a metaphor and then, when the project emerges, let it drop? Or, is it inevitable that when the pressure of the metaphor is too great, we emerge completely draped in an unwanted cloth? Yes, we are aware that the project was presented as such. Following the verdict of the jury, the Chinese gave this project its epitaph. In their culture the pressure of metaphor is perhaps even greater than it is in the West. It was perhaps advisable to call it a "nest", making its presentation to the public easier and commensurable with human scale. From a distance, people standing on top of the structure appear as short bristles of hair on top of a colossus head. On closer inspection, the steel members of this basket seem far too large and obtrusive to allow any sense of suspension and levitation. It appears as if the image has carried the designer and their engineers to extreme density and redundancy in its construction. Even if technically the constraints were such that no superior grade steel could have been used and the profile had to be so thick and obtrusive- some other strategy should have been adopted to rescue the original train of thought from its overweight version. I am sure that the generation of Chinese sports-lovers will flock to this nest without qualms.

The silent revolution that, with or without aeronautics software applied to building projects, has made it possible for the engineer to realize almost any shape or cloud into a manmade object, clearly requires new critical dimensions and parameters, without which we would be in the sea of chimera. It is not the fear of chimera that inspires these remarks, for 'our chimeras are what resemble us the most' (Victor Hugo's Les Miserables) but, it is the need to explore new potentials. Indeed, among the associates in the Herzog & de Meuron office is Christine Binswanger; her ancestor, Ludwig Binswanger, was the father of Phenomenological psychoanalysis. In one of his early texts, Dream and Existence , which begins with a quotation from Kierkegaard: "Above all, we must keep firmly in mind what it means to be a human being," Binswanger elaborates on the all-inclusive character of dreams.  What is a poetic simile, he asks; is it simply a matter of analogy in the logical sense or a pictorial metaphor in the poetic sense? To think either, he suggests is to bypass an understanding of the inner nature of poetic similes. He believed that poetic similes are to be found in the deepest roots of our existence (Existenz) "where the living, spiritual form and the living, spiritual content are still bound together." The endless cycle of ascending and descending lines in this new stadium will no doubt create rhythms of happy upward cycles in the image of rising and rhythms of unhappy downward cycles, such as they are in life.

Indeed, perhaps the wave of ascension will manifest itself through these endless steel members. If the meaning of life is always something trans-subjective, something universal, 'objective' and impersonal, we can only wish to avoid the complete dissolution into pure subjectivity.  Of course, subjective truth can and must work itself through objectivity (the objectivity of communication, intelligibility, submission to a trans-subjective norm). As such, the dream will turn an insight into lived reality. Yes, it is in this sense that the measures can become a rhythm which penetrates through to the essence of the All. Perhaps here we find the greatest resonance with the ancient sympathia. We become aware of the interconnection of understanding and intelligibility, which will keep us alert and awake. ''If we do not stand in relation to the whole, then we are merely dreaming," according to Heraclitus. Most men think that their conception should be something special and original: precisely this is an illusion. Idiosyncrasy of content or form may well be untrue and evil. Whatever contribution Ai Weiwei made to this project, it is clear that here in Beijing, Herzog & de Meuron were moved by something unexpected and surprising – something which will, no doubt, continue to reverberate in our minds.

Aus der Ausgabe 07-2008