China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters
Better buildings through geometry
China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters
CCTV‘s new headquarters in Beijing wears its engineering on its sleeve. So complex is this 768-foot-tall anti-skyscraper that the architects, the Netherlands-based Office of Metropolitan Architecture, chose to show off the structural seams for visual effect.
The building is a continuous loop (resembling a twisted doughnut to some, “big shorts” to others), a shape that would normally be too stiff to stand up against the region’s famously epic earthquakes. The solution: Engineers at Arup enclosed the more than five-million-square-foot building in a triangulated steel surface, forming what’s called a diagrid, and optimized the pattern to meet structural demands. The triangles are dense in regions that bear heavy loads and spare where loads are light. This gives the building, whose interiors are now under construction, enough flexibility to survive the kind of ungodly tremors that occur once every 2,500 years.
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China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters
Better buildings through geometry
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Once every 2,500 years brings to mind the question, When was the last one? The Netherlands are using their educational system to actually produce Engineers... rather than Lawyers and Politicians (the same)? What a revolutionary concept. Possibly the USA will again look into that... some day.
US is to poor to build right now, busy putting money in better places like India...
The problem is that architecture is not only about technology it is about people. And the thing about people is that they feel and the thing about most hi-tech buildings is that they are sterile and cold and don't relate to anything around them.
So while they look fun and exciting from a photo or while visiting them, they are a lot less fun when you work or live in them or look at them all day long.
It is like a date, we can meet someone fascinating, original, exciting but ultimately if you want to live with them you need to feel good and comfortable with them all day long.
We haven't learned yet to do hi-tech architecture that relates emotionally with people because we connect with the world with our mind mostly. Also because architects and developers have big egos. Time to grow up.
Why cant they just build a normal building
Architecture is about technology and people and visual stimulus and fun and emotional response and on and on. There's no such thing as a "normal building", just boring buildings or cheap buildings. This one is about as ugly as I have ever seen, but it ain't boring! And it won't be cheap. At least the Chinese are willing to build interesting buildings and the Europeans are willing to invest in educating engineers and architects to look beyond "normal".
This looks like a giant Ariel ! CCTV headquarters is unique and I must add cool. The architecture is clever.
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