Beijing: The Latest Architecture and News

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.

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:

¿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.