[photopress:real_estate__CCTV_Towers_3.jpg,full,alignright]The ‘twisted doughnut’, a 230m high continuous loop of steel and concrete,will look down on their city by the time the Olympics open in August 2008.
This brightly coloured, Z-shaped construction, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, is to be the headquarters of the state broadcaster, CCTV.
This is part of an architectural movement in China specifically, but not only, in Beijing.
The world’s best-known avant-garde architects, including Koolhaas, Norman Foster, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron and Paul Andreu, are transforming Beijing ahead of next year’s games. Zaha Hadid and Albert Speer Jnr have also been involved in projects, either taking part in competitions or helping with planning issues.
The Olympics have played a powerful symbolic role in shifting development from the biggest city and financial capital, Shanghai, to the political center of Beijing.
In China, the Olympics have become a symbol for its re-emergence on the international stage and for its strong development in recent years.
It is a building boom that has captured the popular imagination, in China and abroad.
Of the 31 Olympic venues in Beijing, 12 are new, 11 are older buildings being refurbished and eight are temporary structures. Except for the National Stadium, due to be completed next March, all the venues will be completed by the end of the year.
The US$674 million CCTV building, designed by Koolhaas and built by the British engineering firm Arup, will radically alter the skyline of the capital. It is a structure that does not look like it should stand up at all. The 80 storeys will house 475,000 square metres of floor space, making it the largest single structure in the world after the Pentagon.
Source: The Independent by way of China Rises
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