3D print the Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest)
A free, printable model of the Beijing National Stadium, the Bird's Nest, and the park, river and roads around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest)
The Beijing National Stadium, also called the Bird's Nest, stands in Chaoyang, Beijing, China, at the Olympic Green. It covers 204,000 square meters and holds 80,000 people, or 91,000 with temporary seating. Ground was broken in December 2003, construction officially started in March 2004, and the stadium opened on June 28, 2008. It was made for the Summer Olympics and Paralympics of 2008, and it staged the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, the athletics program and the football final. It was used again for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2022.
The Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron won the design in April 2003 following a bidding contest with 13 final submissions. The design grew out of a study of Chinese ceramics, and extra steel beams were used to hide the supports for a retractable roof, which gave the stadium its bird's-nest look. The roof was later dropped from the design. The stadium has two independent structures, 50 feet apart: a seating bowl of red concrete and a steel frame wrapped around the outside. Twenty-four trussed columns surround the inner bowl, each weighing 1,000 tons.
The eastern and western stands are higher than the northern and southern ones, to improve sightlines, and the farthest seat sits 140 meters (460 feet) from center field. A rainwater collector near the stadium purifies water for use throughout and around it, and pipes beneath the field gather winter heat to warm the stadium and release it in summer to cool it. Herzog & de Meuron were the first to use the nickname Bird's Nest. Construction cost came to US$428 million.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 750 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 15 mm | 1:4,688 |
| 200 mm | 19 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 256 mm | 24 mm | 1:2,930 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- A tangled steel lattice
- The outer shell is a web of crisscrossing steel beams, many of them thin. Full detail keeps every beam, which suits a larger print or a fine nozzle, while Print friendly adapts them to the print scale.
- Seating rings inside the shell
- Stepped seating rings line the bowl inside the lattice. A larger print size and layers of 0.12 to 0.16 mm keep the steps crisp.
- One piece with the ground
- The Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest) is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest) takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest) is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest) STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest) grows with the print: about 15 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
