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Comment (AS "The Airport Economist" I recently attended the Beijing Olympics. As I moved around a noisy, smoggy but very excited capital city, I noticed signs of Australia everywhere. The most visible symbol of course is the magnificent water cube designed by PTW architects. PTW won the Beijing contract after Austrade entered them in a Beijing Olympics competition - bidding for design of the main arenas and the Olympic Village - on the back of their award winning design for the Aquatic Centre Homebush at the Sydney Games in 2000.
In fact I attended the swimming finals with PTW CEO John Bilmon who has become something of a "rock-star" architect with everyone asking for his photo outside the water cube.
Australian designers and architects in general have done very well, with at least six major Olympic arenas being Australian-designed and many Australians acting as consultants to those designed locally by their Chinese counterparts.
Outside Beijing too, Australian architects s...
