As Beijing races to radically redesign its skyline for the summer Olympics, one of the most striking new structures is the headquarters for China's national TV broadcaster. It's billed as the second-largest office building on Earth — second only to the Pentagon.
China Central Television (CCTV), the venerable voice of the communist government, will occupy one of the world's most cutting-edge buildings.
Last month, CCTV celebrated the formal joining — or "shaking hands" — of the two leaning legs of the building that have defied gravity for the past three years of construction, and critics for far longer.
At 54 stories tall, the more than $600 million headquarters is far from setting a record for height. The Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan holds that title with 101 stories until the Burj Dubai skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates is completed with more than 160 stories and snatches it next year.
"You can only lose that race," says Ole Scheeren, the German architect-in-charge of the new CCTV headquarters. Instead, Scheeren, a partner with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, says they reinvented the traditional skyscraper by turning it into "a tube folded in space."
The structure "breaks every single building code in China," a beaming Scheeren says, but still won the official go-ahead for construction. "The approval authorities were not able to judge if it could function, so the government formed an expert group of the 13 most senior structural engineers — the people who wrote the codes!"
The green light came in 2004, one of several high-profile victories for the Western architects who have turned China's capital into a playground of experimentation.
The CCTV building is the one that will "blow the minds" of American visitors to the Olympics, says site project manager David Howell of San Francisco.
On the bridge where the two leaning legs of the office building meet, an additional 11 stories will go up, with nothing but the Beijing smog below. People with vertigo should avoid the glass floor Scheeren plans for the viewing deck 525 feet above the city's bustling Central Business District.
China Central Television (CCTV), the venerable voice of the communist government, will occupy one of the world's most cutting-edge buildings.
Last month, CCTV celebrated the formal joining — or "shaking hands" — of the two leaning legs of the building that have defied gravity for the past three years of construction, and critics for far longer.
At 54 stories tall, the more than $600 million headquarters is far from setting a record for height. The Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan holds that title with 101 stories until the Burj Dubai skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates is completed with more than 160 stories and snatches it next year.
"You can only lose that race," says Ole Scheeren, the German architect-in-charge of the new CCTV headquarters. Instead, Scheeren, a partner with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, says they reinvented the traditional skyscraper by turning it into "a tube folded in space."
The structure "breaks every single building code in China," a beaming Scheeren says, but still won the official go-ahead for construction. "The approval authorities were not able to judge if it could function, so the government formed an expert group of the 13 most senior structural engineers — the people who wrote the codes!"
The green light came in 2004, one of several high-profile victories for the Western architects who have turned China's capital into a playground of experimentation.
The CCTV building is the one that will "blow the minds" of American visitors to the Olympics, says site project manager David Howell of San Francisco.
On the bridge where the two leaning legs of the office building meet, an additional 11 stories will go up, with nothing but the Beijing smog below. People with vertigo should avoid the glass floor Scheeren plans for the viewing deck 525 feet above the city's bustling Central Business District.
"I wanted views both horizontally and vertically," Scheeren says. "Being 30 meters (99 feet) up feels more frightening, but at this height, it's so abstract that I find it calming," he says.
No comments:
Post a Comment