CCTV Beijing

This 500,000 sqm building will be the headquarters for Chinese state TV and is Rem Koolhaas’ attempt to create “an unbelievably beautiful building”. It also sees him making a bid for global recognition: Koolhaas has yet to produce his definitive building, and this could be it. Koolhaas was invited to enter both this competition and the one for Ground Zero in New York; his new-found opposition to skyscrapers and a distaste for George W Bush’s America persuaded him to focus on Beijing. “We felt that CCTV was more legitimate territory for experimentation than Ground Zero would be,” he says. The building takes the self-consciously unskyscraper-like form of a giant loop and is as much an exercise in extreme engineering and icon-mongering as an attempt to house the diverse functions of a major broadcasting outfit that employs 10,000 people. “A new icon is formed … not the predictable two-dimensional tower soaring skyward but a truly three-dimensional experience,” he writes in Content.

Comments

[John Renshaw]

If you ask me, Rem has already created his "definitive building" - it's Seattle's new downtown public library. It's the first major library construction of the new millenium - first to deal with the question of what a physical library should be in this digital age - and really a new building type. It’s the first library to employ a fully automated book return/sort system utilizing industrial tech. And it’s great public architecture (provided it survives the next big earthquake relatively intact.) It's also the first library EVER to arrange its stacks into a spiral, starting at the lowest Dewey decimal number, and progressing linearly (spirally?) to the highest. For shame, 20th century modernists! This should have been your idea! As such it’s long overdue. Actually, I can't help but see a kernel of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in this design: take the elevator to the top of the spiral and stroll down the gently graded ramp as you browse through the stacks! Of course Rem’s spiral is contained w/in a box, and Wright hated the box. But the library as a whole is several such boxes, each containing a different functional space, and stacked asymmetrically, and the whole thing is then covered with a diamond lattice skin. The building contrasts sharply with its urban surroundings. It stands out almost as if it were the Guggenheim itself. Most importantly, it’s well loved in my home town, and well-used. If this is not yet considered Rem’s “definitive” building, give it time. At the very least, it’s far more significant than a snooty Prada retail boutique.

[Joseph in Beijing]

That it fills a 3d space in a way that is virtually a first is an interesting point but how well it functions or comes to be loved remains to be seen.