Beijing's Skyline
PaPaPeng
Beijing: Bold? Brazen?
At least architecturally speaking, since a number of new designs are
unlike anything ever seen in China, or anywhere else for that matter.
Suddenly the focus of many of the world's great architects, Beijing in
the run up to the Olympics, is like a blank canvas. Some wonder,
though, if all the lavish new strokes are too expensive, and
eccentric.
By Ron Gluckman /Beijing
http://www.gluckman.com/BeijingArchitecture.html
"THIS IS OUT FIRST HIGH-RISE. We wanted to do something different than
your typical, two-dimensional, obvious skyscraper," says Ole Scheeren,
director of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), the cool
Dutch design firm founded by Rem Koolhaas.
OMA's new project is sure to make a big splash in Beijing, a city
still characterized by conservative, Stalinist architecture. Koolhaas,
who previously proclaimed the skyscraper to be dead, certainly intends
to give life to a decidedly atypical high rise. In fact, simply
describing it is pretty nigh impossible, Scheereen concedes.
The new headquarters for CCTV, China's state television network,
will most resemble a cartoon version of the letter "Z." At 230 meters
high, the brightly colored, continuous loop with no right angles will
tower over every other building in the city upon completion by 2008.
Next door, a companion structure will take on the shape of a
trapezoidal boot. These will provide more than 550,000 square meters
for CCTV studios, offices, exhibitions and a hotel. Each of the
unconventional structures would stand out in any city, at least upon
this planet.
Yet, across Beijing, the once-stodgy urban landscape is sprouting a
number of other avant-garde structures, all designed to prove the
communist capital isn't so much old fashioned, as innovative,
artistic, with-it.
Nor is this merely a Beijing phenomena. From Chongqing to Xiamen,
Chinese cities are falling over themselves in the race for flash
architecture, the perceived badge of hip. Shanghai has its
shelter-skelter skyline, and Shenzhen sports a Viva-Las-Vegas look.
Beijing, however, had always been content to be square.
Not anymore. In fact, even Cold War throwbacks like Tiananmen Square
no longer offer respite. Behind the Great Hall of the People, a site
the size of four soccer pitches incubates a structure that some call
the "Alien Egg."
In a daring design by French architect Paul Andreu, the three halls
that comprise the new National Theater are tucked inside an egg of
titanium and glass. When it opens within the year, this striking egg
will float upon an artificial lake, currently at the moat stage.
Visitors will enter by escalator and appear to plunge into the
water--with Mao's portrait at the Forbidden City behind them.
Unsurprisingly, this radical design provoked so much public outcry
that it was repeatedly halted for reconsideration. Critics complained
that it was too expensive, modern and foreign, especially considering
its location at the very heart of the People's Republic of China.
Architects and engineers circulated petitions to kill the project.
In the end, it was scaled back from a $500 million design with four
theaters to the $300 million three-theater egg that now, fully framed
on Beijing's main boulevard, looks like something hatched from a
galaxy far, far away.
Yet, such quabbling may be a thing of the past. Just three years
after all the controversy over Mr. Andreu's "Alien Egg," the CCTV
tower -- dubbed by locals as the "Twisted Donut" -- has hardly raised
a peep of protest, even as costs soared to $700 million. Mr. Scheeren
confides that there have been questions, mainly over the engineering
realities of this truly radical design.
Understandable, since many of the construction processes have never
been attempted. OMA mainly had to demonstrate the logic of its
structural design. Full approval was given in January, and Beijing
authorities didn't even blink at the new cost estimate, even though
its several times that of any previous OMA project.
In the short space of a few years, Beijing's entire shell of
conservatism seems to have shattered. "The mind here has changed quite
radically in recent years," says Mr. Scheeren. "In America and Europe,
there is very little readiness to do things of this scale and impact
right now. A project like this would be impossible to do anywhere else
in the world."
Has Beijing's taste matured? More likely, the capital desperately
desires to update its dowdy image before it hosts the 2008 Olympics.
Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who designed
London's Tate gallery, are signed for a $460 million skeletal steel
Olympic Stadium that resembles a bird's nest.
Lord Norman Foster was given the nod last November for a $1.9
billion airport expansion, and drawings show a futuristic runway
flanked by an ice-block-like terminal.
And there are many more of these building to come. The Twisted Donut
and 170-meter boot are the first of 300 towers to rise in a new
central business district. In the suburbs are sites for science parks
and other theme developments, as well as luxurious subdivisions with
names like Margarita Island, Glory Vogue, Latte Town, Palm Springs and
Yosemite Village.
Local architects have mixed feelings about these new,
western-flavored designs. While most welcome fresh ideas, few can't
help but envy the stratospheric sums earned by these famous -- and
foreign -- architects. Some also question if these building are
appropriate for Beijing.
"Most Chinese don't have problems with foreign architects. They are
eager to learn, exchange ideas," says a prominent Beijing architect,
who requested anonymity. "But some of these ideas are bad." He singles
out both the National Theater and the CCTV building as over-arching,
misplaced and ridiculously expensive. "Nobody wants to see Beijing
being played the fool."
Lin Gu, a local reporter, recently returned to Beijing after a year
of study in Europe. "This city is increasingly unrecognizable, and it
feels alien, all this avant-garde architecture," he says. "Many people
in Beijing have been brainwashed to think big buildings - however ugly
- are modern."
Average Beijingers, meanwhile, have little idea what is coming to
their skyline soon, or the cost, but are proud of anything that seems
to improve the standing of the capital. "All these big buildings make
Beijing seem like a city of the world," says a proud cab driver, who
quickly asks: "Is this what New York looks like?"
Others grieve the demise of the tiled-roof homes and alleys that
gave the city its ancient charm. The Chinese-born architect, I.M. Pei,
on a visit a few years back, bemoaned the quest to build ever higher.
"I said long ago, you should be able to look out over the walls of the
Forbidden City and see nothing but blue sky. Of course, now it's gray
sky," he added bitterly, "but you see sky."
For how long, though? Few Beijingers are questioning the Twisted
Donut, or the erection of 300 new towers in a formally low-lying city
that had long resisted the instant skylines embraced by the rest of
the country. This may mean that the time is finally ripe for Beijing
to take on the appearance of a bright, bold world capital.
Still, some local architects can't help but worry that the current
urban free-for-all will leave Beijing with egg on its face.
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There are so many large and new buildings in Beijing that make the
whole city look wonderfully modern yet traditionally Chinese. The
buildings are voluminous yet looked balanced, as in a well decorated
cake witha Chinese motif. You can't do a tall, narrow "skyscraper"
cake. The large open space around each building is like a green and
colored skirt that enances this balance. Bold and big as the western
designs described above are they will fit right in and would not at
all look incompatible. If ylou ever visit Beijing on the south east
corner of Tienanmen Square is a grey somber building, the Beijing
Planning Commission (or some name like thta). Inside is a 1:750 scale
model of Beijing that covers a whole floor and will give a very good
idea of where every building is and their relationship to their
neighborhood.