Browsing: Beijing

© SOM

The Chicago and Shanghai offices of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) won the international design competition to expand the Beijing Central Business District (CBD).

Basically, their plan proposes the creation of 3 new districts anchored by parks and green boulevards as you can see on the renderings. But the an important aspects of this project is on the small scale, a network of walkable blocks to offer pedestrian (and bike) friendly scale for development. Because sustainable doesn´t have to mean just “green”, but also to offer an environment on which people can actually establish social relations on a neighborhood scale.

The plan also proposes an express commuter rail service between the Beijing Capital International Airport, the CBD, and high speed rail service at Beijing South Station. A new streetcar system is proposed to conveniently link all areas of the CBD.

Sometimes, a good transportation system and focusing on the pedestrian scale sound obvious, but they are the foundations to establish neighborhoods that can bring life to parts of the city 24/7, instead of business districts that die at night with dormitory cities with a lack of services.

More images after the break.
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© Shu He

Architect: EXH Design – (Erich Diserens, Xi Zhang, Peter Becker, Kenan Liu)
Location: Beijing, China
Constructor: Beijing Shouhua Construction Group
Existing area: 104 sqm
Extension area: 213 sqm
Project year: 2007 – 2009
Photography: Shu He

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KSP Engel und Zimmermann recently designed a 77,000 square meter library extension to accommodate the existing National Library of Beijing.  The new addition will hold approximately 12 million books and be used by an estimated 12,000 people per day.

More about the library after the break. read more »

Architects: MAD
Location: Beijing, China
Structural Engineers: Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD)
Mechanical Engineers: Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD)
Façade/cladding consultants: King General Engineering, SuP Ingenieure GmbH
Interior Designers: Lim.Teo + Wilkes Design Works Pte Ltd
Landscape Designer: Earthasia Design Group
Site Area: 7,779 sqm
Constructed Area: 56,994 sqm
Building height: 106 meters
Images: MAD

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Architectural photographer Pasi Aalto sent us a good photo report on the Crossing Now “Dialogues for Emergency” Exhibition. This exhibition was organized after the Sichuan earthquake (May 12, 2008), which devastated the Chinese nation, with over 69,000 lives lost and over 15 million people affected, needing temporary homes. Crossin Now looks to help these people through architecture, on an exhibition that will bring talented architects from around the world to discuss the issues of environment and emergency architecture from a global perspective.

This exhibition featured works by architects such as: Sou Fujimoto, Rintala Eggertsson, Teddy Cruz, OBRA, PRODUCTORA, Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter, CAFA, Song Xiewei+Han Tao+Xi Xiaojing, Smiljan Radic + Gonzalo Puga, A4设计组, CAL-Earth, ECAL_Martino d‘Esposito, EH+GS, IK studio, Jia Kun Architecture, KUB and ML. + SJU & leondelima

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American architect Steven Holl discusses contemporary architecture in Beijing with acclaimed interviewer Charlie Rose.

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:

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We´ve seen tons of pictures of both the exterior and the inner court of Herzog & de Meuron’s bird nest in Beijing during the Olympics. But what we haven’t seen is the intermediate space inside the nest fibers, a space which looked amazing on the early renderings.

But thanks to Edgar Gonzalez, we can see the colorful inners of the Bird’s Nest through Manuel Ocaña’s Flickr.

Pictures after the break.
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¿Remember GreenPix, the 2,200 sqm LED media wall powered by solar panels we featured some months ago? Alexandra Lerman published a  documentary about the GreenPix on which Simon Giostra, founder of Simone Giostra & Partners. Giostra explains the challenge to design and build this gigantic media wall, with the help of engineering experts ARUP.

Actually Giostra  is trying to convince the chinese goverment to display user generated content on the media wall, which is currently under the curatory of the authorities. This will make if fully interactive.

You can also download a software -available for Mac and PC- to simulate the media wall on your computer using Quicktime videos.

Reminds me of the display on the stage where Beck played at the Oulands Festival in San Francisco last week.

It’s not a rendering but an actual photo of the completed facade of the CCTV Building by OMA in Beijing. The visible face of this iconic building was finished just in time for the olympics, after 6 years of hard work between OMA, ARUP and chinese partners ECADI.

Quite impressive, isn’t it? Hopefully the next pictures we publish with the CCTV finished will be taken by me.

Architects: MAD Office
Location: Beijing, China
Construction year: 2006
Constructed Area: 487.2 sqm
Interior Area: 189.7 sqm
Project Directors: Yansong Ma, Yosuke Hayano
Project Architect: Florian Pucher
Design team: Shen Jun, Christian Taubert, Marco Zuttioni, Yu Kui
Associate Architects & Engineers: IDEA Design Studio
Photographs: Shu He

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After 4 years the Beijing Airport -currently the biggest one in the world- is finished, just in time for the 2008 Olympics. The airport, designed by Foster + Partners, turned out to be a very efficient building in terms of in terms of operational efficiency, passenger comfort, sustainability and access to natural light.

As an interpretation of traditional chinese culture the roof of the airport has a dragon-like form. According to Norman Foster [...] this is a building borne of its context. It communicates a uniquely Chinese sense of place and will be a true gateway to the nation. This is expressed in its dragon-like form and the drama  of the soaring roof that is a blaze of ‘traditional’ Chinese colours – imperial reds merge into golden yellows. As you proceed along the central axis, view of the red columns stretching ahead into the far distance evokes images of a Chinese temple.

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In Beijing is not all about Olympics. The National Grand Theater, by Paul Andreu is a magnificent and gigantic project finished a few months ago, complementing all the infrastructure been built for the big sports event.

The project description after the break.

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The 2008 Olympic Games aren´t just a gathering of athletes, it´s also a showcase of the most innovative buildings and technologies like GreenPIX, the Zero Energy Media Wall by Simone Giostra & Partners and ARUP, pictured above.

This curtain wall covers the front of the Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympic Games. It features the worlds largest color LED display, powered by a photovoltaic system integrated into the glass curtain wall.

This Media Wall will showcase a selection of specially commissioned video installations and live performances by artists from China, Europe and the US, starting in May. Pictures, construction progress, diagrams and videos after the break.

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