7 years of hard work and efforts, the multi-million dollar modernist architecture unveiled for 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is now an eyesore. The blaze renderes the 31 story structure unuseable, as the titamium alloy and zinc of the outer structure was burnt!

With 159m height, the building designed by 2 reknown Architect, Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, house a 1500-seat theater, a large ballroom, digital cinemas, recording studios, exhibition facilities, and a 5-star hotel operated by Mandarin Oriental. Koolhaas and Scheeren won the contract in December 2002. Since then, they were plagued by the usual quarrel about the design and spending. The construction started in 2004 and was expected to be completed in May 2009. It’s original proposal was to open to public for events/entertainment and can be used for filming.

The building was clad in Titanium Zinc alloy, which was introduced to China in 1999, a material that would allow the building to rust with dignity and to endure the passage of time better than other conventional metal Zinc. It’s ideal for high quality architectural cladding of roofs and facades. There’s some debates in Youtube and Twitter about why this building did not collapse.

Image by OMA Architect

From Time Magazine, May 2004:

“Detractors cite the $730 million CCTV project as the ultimate example of the Chinese regime’s tendency to plunder state coffers to glorify its own iron authority and say Koolhaas is an opportunist taking advantage of the country’s unique combination of state power and state capital to realize his own artistic ambitions. Ian Buruma, a writer who is a friend of Koolhaas, wondered aloud in the Guardian, a British newspaper, how the world would have reacted if an architect of Koolhaas’ stature had in the 1970s designed a TV station for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

But Koolhaas, 59, who was one of the first Western architects to study and write about China’s urban explosion, revels in such intellectual tussles. CCTV, he insists, like the mainland itself, ‘is in mutation’ and the building represents an effort to complement the state-owned company’s desire to keep pace with the times. CCTV’s current headquarters is completely closed to the public. Koolhaas’ design, in contrast, includes a public ‘media park’ in and around the base of the building intended to foster more interaction between commissars and the masses. ‘We are engaged,’ he says, ‘with an effort to support within [China's] current situation the forces that we think are progressive and well-intentioned… We’ve given them a building that will allow them to mutate.’”

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A fire has destroyed the annex of CCTV new headquaters in Beijing an hour ago. I was chatting with a friend based in Beijing and he told me CCTV was on fire. At the same time, I was in Twitter and Micro bloggers from Twitter are reporting the news. Not only did Twitter get the news before mainstream media, it seems as if it got the news before emergency services. I read it was cause by unregulated Chinese New Year fireworks. According to Reuters, the destroyed building housed the Mandarin Oriental hotel in eastern Beijing, which was supposed to open in 2009.

You can read the news here: CNN, Reuters, Asia-Pacific News, and Xinhuanet.

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The clocks across China are counting down to the day in the evening of August 8th, the moment when Beijing will launch the games of the 29th Olympiad. In preparation for its moment in the centre of the world stage, the city has transformed itself from the downager of old to a dazzling young star decked out in a stunning display of architecture haute couture!

Beijing National Stadium aka The Bird Nest is a stadium finished for the Olympic Green will be an icon and new landmark for Beijing.

The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies, track and field as well as soccer events. It has a total capacity of 91,000 and 11,000 temporary seating will be removed after the Game, leaving a permanent capacity of 80,000.

Pritzker¹ Prize -winning architects – Herzog & de Meuron Architekten , a Swiss architecture firm founded and headquartered in Basel lead the design.

The structural form of the roof is decsribe as a "nest", an interwoven structural elements of the facade produce a single surface, upon which further elements are arranged in a chaotic manner to blurr the distinction between the primary and secondary structure. The roof is saddle in shaped, and the geomatry is developed from an ellips based. The steel roof, a single 330m long by 220m wide structure weighting 45,000 tonnes is clad with a series of ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) panels on the structure to make the Nest one of the most ingeniously designed "green" buildings in the world. This layer reflects and absorbs sound to maintain the atmosphere in the stadium.

An interwoven structure elements arranged in a chaotic manner.

ETFE
ETFE, a transparent plastic related to Teflon is taking the place of glass and other plastics in many of the most innovatibe buildings being constructed today. It is also known as the material of the future. Compare to glass, it’s 1% the weight, transmit more light, is a better insulator, and cost far less to install. It’s also recycleable, self-cleaning and far tougher, with an estimated 50 years life span.

The nest was build using a polymer called ETFE.

This amazing Nest didn’t come cheaply but still, Beijingers love this building!

Viewing from Google map when it was in construction.

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¹ One of the world’s premier Architecture prizes awarded "irrespective of nationality, race, creed, or ideology. Some of the Laureates are: I.M Pei, Richard Meier, Kenzo tange, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano, Sir Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid…

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I found that mainlanders like to write on the floor in public!

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When you steps onto the ancient street of Wangfujing in Beijing, you will notice a sugar blower went from street to street with his shoulder poles, carrying stools and cupboards on each side. The cupboard held charcoal, charcoal stove with a cuprum spoon full of maltose in the center. On top of it were models of different kinds of sugar figures on straws. These have attracted lots of kids and tourists.

First, the maker prepares his basic recipe and makes the hard candy or maltose by heating it until it becomes soft. He then picks up a lump of the maltose and nip the soft maltose by hands, makes a small hollow to plugs it into a wheat straw pole and blow gently, using his hand to form a figure… He slowly blows through the pipe and enlarges the air pocket inside the sugar ball. Soon, the soft maltose turns into a striking creature. This sugar figures would sell for 30 yuan.

This traditional parts of the Chinese culture still enjoys a strong vitality and social influence in Beijing.

The sugar blower has made a variety of sugar figures that he displays on his stand.

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Ok, Nellie and I was so excited about this photo that we took during our site visit. A beautiful and peaceful scenery with a bicycle under the tree… The first things we did was change our desktop photo to this pic, haha!

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Back from Beijing. It’s freezing !! Well, the construction site is actually located beside Beijing city, 2 hours drive from Beijing Airport.

A so call “hotel” that we are staying was the lousiest hotel I have ever stay in! It’s just like a motel with broken ceiling… but we are told that’s the best hotel in town

I was thinking that finally, we can try the authentic Peking Duck (a famous dish in Beijing) but instead, we had some other authentic dish like fried chicken ankle!!!… in a so call high class restaurant But it’s a lot nicer then Shanghainese food. Beijing people are friendly. We are so glad that the big clients that we met speak English! The guy is a HK born Canadian PR while the lady is married to an American. They speak good English!

From the left: Van (Our Art Director), Me, Client, Client, Nellie and the one holding the camera was our technical designer!

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Just a quick post… will be going outstation to Beijing later for a Golf Club House and Hotel project. I am now writing this blog while waiting for my driver to fetch me to the airport at 6am later. Well, it’s winter time and guess Beijing will be colder than Shanghai.

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