Mandarin Hotel in Beijing by OMA on fire [UPDATED]
The Mandarin Hotel, adjacent to the CCTV building and part of the project, just got on fire today. The project, designed by OMA with facade studies by FRONT, looks to be completly affected as you can see on the above video. This supossedly started after fireworks during the last day of Chinese new year.
Mandarin Hotel on the left, CCTV at the right. Photo by Iwan Baan.
The hotel was used during the Olympics, but wasn´t officially opened yet, but was supossed to during 2009. This will definetely push dates back, as it seems like a complete loss to me.
Photos of the fire by Reuters here (very impressive, but can´t put them here because of copyright). More videos after the break.
UPDATE 5: Added 4 more videos
UPDATE 4: Statement from the Mandarin Hotel Group after the break
UPDATE 3: I replaced the first video with actual footage of the hotel starting to burn after the fireworks
UPDATE 2: Wonitata and other chinese blogs have impressive photos of the fire. See some more after the break.
UPDATE 1: Beijing police says the building could collapse
UPDATE: We just got the following statement from OMA:
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture has learned that there has been a serious fire at the Television Cultural Centre (TVCC), the building adjacent to the headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV).
The TVCC building was due to open in mid-May and contained a hotel, a theatre and several studios.
As we learn more about this tragedy, we will advise the public further.
Statement from the Mandarin Hotel Group:
Statement in response to the fire at the development site of Mandarin Oriental, Beijing
Mandarin Oriental, Beijing was scheduled to open in the summer of 2009. The property currently employs 60 staff, all of whom work in pre-opening offices near to the hotel, which were empty at the time of the fire. Mandarin Oriental has signed a long-term contract to manage the hotel and has no ownership interest in the building. Our local management team are doing all they can to help the authorities to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved. It is too early at the present stage to assess the damage, but we will make further updates as soon as we have more information.
This is really a tradegy …. hope no lives in danger!!!
OMG Hw sad
The construction firm should be in problems right now.
looks like they hooked up the gas line to the sprinklers.
nice coment h. it really look like they did that. its amazing to see such a great building burning down. its a damn fking situation.
updated article with photos and videos of the #TVCC building fire at ArchDaily: http://is.gd/iXrL
@slnsyndicate http://tinyurl.com/cthkgm すごいことなってますね。 フォロー許可 あざっす
How unfortunate.
There’s been little MSM coverage of this in China, only a “News Flash” at 07:00 (Beijing time) this morning. The fire started around 21:00 on the 9th.
WTC?
yikes.
What an incredible loss to the global architecture community.
the beginnin of the end.
About the only thing more horrifying than this is the number of spelling and grammar mistakes in your post. Yowzers. Bonus points for making an extra effort.
I am still in disbelief. I stood right infront of the burning building, the fire engines and police took forever to arrive with the bottleneck traffic.
Ironically, the news has been censored by CCTV when it involved the tragedy of its new building.
KINDLY REFRAIN FROM “NONSENSE” STATEMENTS..
You start yourself asking: what are the local fire-protection regulations? Non-inflamable materials required? Curtainwall systems with nonburning core? Sprinklersystems? Smokealarms? Firefree elevators for the firefighters to locally fight the fire? The capacity of the firefighters? Where are the firefighter on the pictures anyways? O.K., we know way to little about this to make a fair judgement, but such high flames are really scary, and there should have been a number of barriers to be broken before it got so out of controll. Such high-rise buildings are planned all over the world with outmost care, in some regions the design is directly effected by fire regulations. We can only hope that the load bearing structure didn´t get damaged too bad.
新年大花火まとめページ http://tinyurl.com/cthkgm
That horrible building is not a loss to architecture. but its sad for those construction workers, architects and engineers whos spent years of their lives erecting it.
@MZ: Koolhaas inspected the building three weeks ago and told the press the spinklers were to be installed after Chinese holiday.
hmmm
something was fishy with the facade it burned out to quick.
not constructors or materials failed…the organisors of fireworks and city govenment are responsible for it !!!
5 minutes of happyness
唉！悲哀！
can a firework burn a building down? in the video, the fire started in a corner, then spread upwards.. am i right? in just one corner?
The local news says that the CCTV set off unlicensed custom made fireworks that went out of control… The question is how could a building of steel and glass catch fire so quickly and keep burning?
i heard the goverment didnt liked that building becuase it ruined the iconic wiew of the other building: the only reason why they build it in the first place.
so they burnt it down as an “perfectly safe accident” and the world wouldn’t take it as an offense to the architect work.