Visionary Skyscraper Finally Completed

Add this to the "oh yeah" file. After eight years of construction, the completion ceremony for the OMA-designed China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters in Beijing was held this week.

1 minute read

May 17, 2012, 2:00 PM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


The result of a competition held in 2002, the winning design from Rem Koolhaas's office was envisioned as the "reinvention of the skyscraper as a loop."

"CCTV defies the skyscraper's typical quest for ultimate height. Rising from a common platform, two towers lean towards each other and eventually merge in a perpendicular, 75-metre cantilever...The structure of the CCTV Headquarters, and the forces at work within it, is visible on its façade: a web of diagonals that becomes dense in areas of greater stress, looser and more open in areas requiring less support. The façade itself becomes a visual manifestation of the building's structure."

See the article for some stunning pictures of the building from photographer Iwan Baan, and others.

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