Given the astounding expectations piled upon the National Stadium, it’s a surprise it hasn’t collapsed under the strain.

More than 90,000 spectators will stream through its gates on Friday for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games; billions are expected to watch the fireworks on television. At the centre of it all is this dazzling stadium, which is said to embody everything from China’s muscle-flexing nationalism to a newfound cultural sophistication.

Expect to be overwhelmed. Designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the stadium lives up to its aspiration as a global landmark. Its elliptical latticework shell, which has earned it the nickname the Bird’s Nest, has an intoxicating beauty that lingers in the imagination. Its allure is only likely to deepen once the enormous crowds disperse and the Olympic Games fade into memory.

In a site for mass gatherings, Herzog and de Meuron have carved out psychological space for the individual, and rethought the relationship between the solitary human and the crowd, the everyday and the heroic. However the structure attests to China’s nationalistic ambitions, it is also an aesthetic triumph that should cement the nation’s reputation as a place where bold, creative gambles are unfolding every day.

Until now, the number of memorable Olympic stadiums could be counted on one hand. There is Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Stadium, by Werner March, with its imposing ring of stone columns, a symbol of fascism’s absolute disregard for the individual. In an intentional counterpoint, Günter Behnisch and Frei Otto designed transparent tentlike roof canopies for the 1972 Olympic Stadium in Munich, daring in their structural innovation. And there is the elegant ring of slender Y-shaped columns supporting Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzetto dello Sport, which was a minor venue at the 1960 Games in Rome.

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