Surfing on a ribbon

As of February 4th, the 26th Olympic Winter Games will be launched. The sporting events will take place in three different areas, Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. Most of the facilities from the 2008 Summer Olympics were retained, only one new project had to be built in Beijing: the Big Air Shougang slope for freestyle skiing and snowboarding. This new sports structure and the transformation project of the Shougang industrial park, in which it is located, were designed by the architectural firm TeamMinus. “The design of the Big Air Shougang is inspired by the ancient murals of Dunhuang and takes the shape of a ribbon flying through the air,” Zhang Shunjie, designer of the Big Air Shougang, told the Global Times media. Its transformable design of 1,100 components allows the structure to be adapted for snowboarding or freestyle skiing.