Olympic architecture Top 10:past, present and future

As we say goodbye to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, let's take a look back at the glories of Olympic architecture from the past, and look forward to even more innovation to come. The competition for the honor of hosting the Olympic Games is an intense, worldwide fight, but with that prize comes the tremendous responsibility of building a complex of structures to support the games.

Every Olympic city has risen to the challenge, putting its best design and creative minds into the limelight for all the world to see. Some of the efforts have been more successful than others, and a few of the host countries have spent decades paying off the debt incurred by such architectural ambition. Hit continue to see our picks for the Top 10 best Olympic buildings in history.

Bird’s Nest (Beijing National Stadium) 2008
Beijing National Stadium’s “Bird’s Nest” nickname could be in honor of the U.S. Olympic Team’s numerous eggs laid there, but despite that, its soaring architecture puts it at the top of our list. The Chinese government held a competition in 2002 to see who could put together the most beautiful Olympic stadium yet, and a consortium of architects consisting of the Pritzker Prize-winning Herzog & de Meuron teamed up with ArupSport and China Architecture Design & Research Group to create this wild-looking tangle of steel.]

London Aquatics Centre 2012
Architect Zaha Hadid set out to top any aquatics center ever built with her fantastic design, and it’s so innovative that a lot of engineers are questioning whether such a structure can even be built at all. Don’t fret, Zaha, that’s what they said about the Em pire State Building. The Aquatics Center’s sweeping steel roof will be clad in aluminum, and the interior of this wild-looking roof will be made of wood, the type of which is still yet to be chosen. Construction began on this jaw-dropping structure last month.

Water Cube (Beijing National Aquatics Center) 2008
Set up a huge steel frame and hang hundreds of asymmetrical plastic bubbles on it and the result is the other-worldly-looking Beijing National Aquatics Center, affectionately known as the Water Cube. It's not really a cube at all, though, but a rectangular box that’s 102 feet high. We especially like its squeaky-clean design, punctuated by colorful LED lighting embedded into the exterior that makes the building look like an ’80s disco taking a bubble bath.

China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters Building and Television Cultural Centre 2008
While it’s not an official Olympics building, construction of the China Central Television Headquarters building was finished just in time for the opening of the Olympic Games, and many of its facilities were used for the 17-day broadcast. One of the largest office buildings on the planet, the 49-story building looks like it’s about to fall over. Not to worry — the structure, dubbed “Big Shorts,” its specially designed and built to withstand huge earthquakes.