Olympic venues completed

All 37 venues for the Beijing Olympics have been completed. The news came as the National Stadium, more popularly known as the Bird's Nest, was declared fully functional last Saturday.

The National Stadium, which cover 258,000 sq m of the Olympic Green, will be the site of the Games' opening and closing ceremonies.

The stadium was designed by the Swiss firm Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and China Architecture Design and Research Institute. Their design was chosen in an international competition in 2003.

The Bird's Nest, the largest steel structure in the world, topped Time magazine's 100 Most Influential Design list.