The $143 million venue's playful facade, which evokes giant soap bubbles, is made of ETFE, a durable plastic that allows natural light into the building and is a better insulator than glass.
"It's super lightweight, so it allows us to cut a lot of the structural load out of the building as a result," said Haico Schepers, leader of the sustainable buildings group at Arup, the engineering firm that was a partner in the Cube's design.
The daylight that the material conducts into the building is also harnessed to heat the swimming pool, reducing the pool enclosure's energy consumption by 30 percent.
Part of the building's success, said Schepers, was that its green aspects were not afterthoughts, but integrated into the design.
"What we tend to find with sustainability is if you make it an add-on item, there's a large risk it gets costed out through the process," he said.
NO OSTENTATION
Premier Wen Jiabao himself has urged energy efficiency in the Olympics venues as environmental sustainability becomes a theme of China's leadership, keen to ward off civil discontent sparked by widespread degradation.
"There will be no talk of extravagance or ostentation in organizing the Olypmic Games. We should save every drop of water and every unit of electricity in the construction of the Olympic venues," local media quoted Wen as saying last year.
For its part, Beijing's organizing committee has stressed the environmental aspects of the Olympic village, which include solar heating to supply hot water to its more than 16,000 residents, a rainwater collection system and a heating and cooling system that will cut electricity by 40 percent by using recycled water.
But experts say there have also been near-misses and lost opportunities.
One of the buildings where Chinese athletes are training was built with timber from an uncertified source - meaning it could have come from protected forests - because Beijing's organizing committee had little control over the contractor, Oben said.
The design for the basketball venue initially included giant LED screens on each side, a plan Watson said would have used as much energy in one project as several thousand Chinese families.
Still, despite some missed opportunities, environmentalists hope where things went well they will provide a template for what rapidly growing China could do in future.
"I think the ability to point at some of the innovations in these facilities, or the mistakes, will have some impact down the road," said Watson.
"Certainly the best buildings in China are equivalent to the best buildings anywhere."
