Welcome to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Design Observatory

This blog is dedicated to research about the design enterprises of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Students of the "Design and National Identity" senior seminar, taught by Dr. Jilly Traganou at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, will update this page with news and critical assessments of the Beijing Olympic design.

Here are some links to start with:

Official Web-site of Beijing Olympics is:

http://en.beijing2008.cn/

Information about design can be found in pages:

http://en.beijing2008.cn/spirit/beijing2008/graphic/
http://en.beijing2008.cn/cptvenues/
http://en.beijing2008.cn/funpage/

Two other particularly helpful websites with current research material on the Olympics are the following:

Culture@the Olympics: issue, trends and perspectives
by Beatriz Garcia and Andy Miah

http://www.culturalolympics.org.uk/2007.html

and

the website of the Olympic Studies Center of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

http://olympicstudies.uab.es/eng/index.asp

Please let us know your thoughts about the Beijing Olympic design.

Jilly Traganou