In early 2002, my office received two invitations: one to propose a design for Ground Zero, the other to propose a design for the headquarters of China Central Television in Beijing. We discussed the choice over Chinese food. The life of the architect is so fraught with uncertainty and dilemmas that any clarification of the future, including astrology, is disproportionately welcome. My fortune cookie that night read: STUNNINGLYOMNIPRESENT MASTERS MAKE MINCED MEAT OF MEMORY.

We chose China.

The Chinese love the monumentalambition. They hate the monumentalprice tag – and the “foreign” design.A portfolio of the grand ideas and grimrealities behind the contentious newvision for China Central Television.

KOOL CHINA

BY REM KOOLHAAS

BEIJINGMANIFESTO

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WIRED • 08|2004 • 121

Rem Koolhaas is founder of OMA-AMO, the architecture firm and research group. This piece is adapted from his new book, Content (Taschen), producedwith Simon Brown, Jon Link, and Brendan McGetrick.

Towers higher than 150 meters,by date of completion

For more than a decade, the number of high-rise buildings in Asia has surpassed that in North America. On October 17, 2003, the final spire on the Taipei 101 building was raised into place, making it the world’s tallestbuilding by more than 50 meters overthe former number one, the PetronasTowers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In theWest, pundits continue to debate theviability of the skyscraper post-9/11,apparently unaware that in most of the world the high-rise has become a prerequisite.

KOOL CHINA

THE SKYLINE RISES IN THE EAST

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The China Central Television headquarters will be located in the northern part of Beijing’s newCentral Business District, near the intersection ofChang’an Avenue and the Third Ring Road. We aimto break ground later this year and to completethe project in time for the 2008 Olympics.

The site covers about four blocks, with a totalarea of 180,000 square meters. There are twomajor buildings – CCTV, which hosts TV-productionfacilities, and TVCC, a hospitality center with ahotel. On the southeast block, the Media Park will be open to the public for events and enter-tainment, as well as available for outdoor filming.

In the free market, architecture = real estate.Any complex corporation is dismantled, each unitsequestered in place. All media companies suffera subsequent paranoia: Each department – thecreative department, the finance department,administration, et cetera – talks about the othersas “them”; distrust is rife, motives are questioned.

But in China, money does not yet have the lastword. CCTV is envisioned as shared conceptualspace in which all parts are housed permanently,aware of one another’s presence – a collective.Communication increases; paranoia decreases.

KOOL CHINA

BUILDING CONSENSUS

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WIRED • 08|2004 • 125

After our design was accepted, it created twokinds of apprehension, if not disappointment.First, was it merely a landmark, one more alienproposal of meaningless boldness? Was its structural complexity simply irresponsible? OnAugust 5, 2003, an afternoon event at TsinghuaUniversity allowed all parties to vent criticism. It was not easy, I realized, for the assembled intelligentsia to see the difference between CCTVand any of the other foreign extravaganzas still inthe pipeline. There was surprise at my descriptionof the building as a collective, a word with com-plex associations. There was relief when the building, which had been considered in isolation,was presented in conjunction with our larger proposals for historical preservation in Beijing and a low-rise business district, revealing an interlocking hypothesis for Beijing’s future landuse … the beginnings of a Beijing Manifesto.

Still, the younger audience members questionedallocating resources to “prestige,” even whilewestern China is ravaged by poverty; and theolder generation of engineers was shocked to see the objective purity of their profession at theservice of the unusual. A pact between the twosides – a coalition of the unwilling – could easilyclose a possibility that had just been opened. A refusal of the Promethean in the name of correctness and good sense could forecloseChina’s architectural potential.

2000Studio

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UNIVERSAL MODERNIZATION PATENT [14]

TALL & SLENDER (1996)

never achieve those heights; coupling them at reg-ular intervals creates stability without fatness.

(21) Patent for “Tall& Slender”

(29) A R R A N G E M E N T O FM U T U A L L Y S U P P O R T I V E T O W-ERS TO REACH NEW HEIGHTSWITHOUT WIDE BASE.

(36) Inventor(s): R e mKoolhaas, Yo Yamagata

Correspondence Address:OMA, HEER BOKELWEG

149 3 0 3 2 A D R O T T E R D A MTEL: + 31(0)

1 0 2 4 3 8 2 0 0

(42) Initial Application: Hyperbuilding, Bangkok,T H A I L A N D

(54)Filed:.....................1996

(71) A B S T R A C T

The stability of ever-taller towersis bought at the expense ofincreasing their footprints, eitherin the traditional form of thepyramid, or as a larger and largertube. But a composite stabilitycan be established with members(58, 59) that, on their own could

Patent Number: 9,346,587

KOOL CHINA

“A structure that violates some of the most

WIRED • 08|2004 • 127

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UNIVERSAL MODERNIZATION PATENT [14]

SKYSCRAPER LOOP(2002)

(54) Patent for “BentSkyscraper”

(54) M ETHOD OF AVOIDING THEISOLATION OF THE TRADITIONAL HIGHRISE BY TURNING FOUR SEGMENTS INTO AL O O P

(76) Inventors: Rem Koolhaas, OleScheeren, Shohei Shigematsu,Fernando Donis, Alain Fouraux

Correspondence Address:

OMA, HEER BOKELWEG 149 3 0 3 2 A D R O T T E R D A MTEL: + 31(0) 102438200

(21) Initial Application: C C T V ,Beijing, C H I N A

(22) Filed:......................2002

(23) A B S T R A C T

By breaking (60) the traditional tower that merelygoes up and down at four points, a loop of buildingcan be generated that unites and confronts (61, 62) its

Patent Number: 2,565,267

sincerely held convictions about logic and beauty.”

KOOL CHINA

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11/Sept/2001

CCTV headquarters is an ambitiousbuilding. It was conceived at the sametime that the design competition for Ground Zero took place – not inthe backward-looking US, but in theparallel universe of China.

In communism, engineering has a high status, its laws resonating with Marxian wheels of history. Toprove the stability of a structure thatviolates some of the most sincerelyheld convictions about logic andbeauty, the engineering firm Arup hadto dissect every detail of our design.The effort to reassure only reveals the scary aliveness of every structure– elasticity, creep, shrinkage, sagging,bending, buckling. Serving as a

hypnotic window, the computer analyzes and exposes the shockingvividness of the mineral world withthe tenacity of a pervert.

I heard one of Cecil Balmond’sengineers at Arup describe, withoutirony or noticeable wavering, howtwo sloping steel structures in ourdesign could be connected only at dawn. They would be exposed todifferent solar heat gain due to theirrelative positions on the ground andwould be most likely to share thesame temperature after cooling offovernight. I was elated and horrifiedby the sheer outrageousness of theproblem we had set before them.Why do they never say no? n

AD 2008

1100 BC

WIRED • 08|2004 • 129

Samson tears down thehouse of the Philistines. TOWARD A NEW STABILITY