CCTV is connected - view from our apartment 2007-12-31
In first week of December the CCTV headquarters had been connected. For weeks the building's two towers had been edging closer, as if locked in some sort of glacial, surrealist architectural mating dance. The tension was killing us. Now the tension is keeping the towers locked together. What makes the "twisted donut" different now, was that the hole, not the building, has become visible. Is there any other building in the world so defined by its negative space?
The complete connection is scheduled for February. And a proper ceremony to celebrate the tying of the knot was scheduled for just after Christmas (the building will open in 2009). Now that the towers have consummated their loopy relationship, how long will it be until they start spawning baby CCTVs all over the city?
This building is the most expensive building every built in the world 800.000 miljons USD!
The arms, 162 meters above Beijing's Central Business District, reached out 75.165 meters and 67.165 meters, respectively, and were joined first week of December.
They will accommodate 14 stories of offices by using 18,000 tons of steel.
The two towers, 234 meters and 194 meters high, respectively, lean six degrees and formed the main building for the new complex that has a floor space of 495,900 square meters.
International media eyed the CCTV building as a symbol of China's growing strength and modernization. Domestic critics, however, said a huge amount of steel was wasted because of its strange shape.
CCTV Towers - when finished...
The building, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, was listed as one of the wonders of Chinese architecture by U.S.-based Business Week magazine and viewed as the most radical structure in the country. The huge project, for which the foundation was laid in September 2004, finally won the central government's approval 18 months after it had been halted due to worries about over-heated property investment as well as traffic congestion fears around it.
For more background on the project, take a look at this clip from a Discovery Channel documentary about Olympic-related construction in Beijing (YouTube):
