英东游泳馆

Yingdong Natatorium sits in the northern part of the National Olympic Sports Centre at 1 Anding Road, Chaoyang District, sharing the campus south of the North Fourth Ring Road with the centre's stadium and indoor arena. It was financed by a HK$100 million donation from the Hong Kong businessman Henry Fok after Beijing won the bid for the 1990 Asian Games, built between June 1987 and December 1989, and was the largest swimming hall in Asia at the time; together with the Asian Games village it helped turn this stretch of northern Beijing into a new sports district. The hall contains four pools: a 25 by 50 metre competition pool with a depth of 1.4 to 4.5 metres, a 25 by 25 metre diving pool, an 11.5 by 50 metre warm-up pool and a relaxation pool, along with a 7.5 metre diving platform and eight racing lanes. After the rebuild for the Beijing Olympics between April 2006 and August 2007 the building reached 44,635 square metres with 4,852 fixed seats, often quoted as 6,000 in Games-time figures. It hosted swimming at the 1990 Asian Games and the 2001 Universiade, then water polo preliminaries and the swimming leg of the modern pentathlon at the 2008 Olympics, and served as a swimming training venue during the 2008 Paralympics. Architecturally the natatorium presents a large glazed curtain wall and a clean white volume towards the artificial lake at the centre of the Olympic complex; the 2007 refit emphasised green and technological standards, with ozone disinfection supported by chlorine for the pool water. After the Games it shifted to a public natatorium model, offering lap swimming, coaching and water polo, with a single visit of about 50 yuan and monthly and ten-visit cards. Olympic Sports Centre station on metro line 8 opens onto the east gate of the campus, and the building faces the Bird's Nest across the North Fourth Ring Road, with dense bus routes along Anding Road.