Spotlight> Beijing Design Week
(Courtesy Beijing Design Week)
Beijing Design Week
September 26–October 3
Beijing Design Week, now in its second year, aims to change the catchphrase “Made in China” to “Designed in China.” The festival will bring together 30 local and international design firms for packed roster of events focusing on urban design and including Dutch artist/architect Daan Roosegaarde’s experiments with LEDs (above). Design Week will take over the whole city, staging happenings everywhere from the trendy 798 art district to Tiananmen Square, whose neighboring historic district will host pop-up shops and street art installations, to the site of the China Millenium Monument, where Paul Cocksedge will unveil an installation on October 1. This year London was invited to be Beijing’s “guest city,” and emissaries from the London Design Festival will translate some of their most successful ideas and activities into a new context.
Smoke Clears from TVCC
The burned out TVCC tower, photographed earlier this month. (Anders V/Flickr)
Shortly after the dramatic fire consumed much of the TVCC tower in Beijing earlier this year, we speculated on the building’s fate. Well, it’s taken eight months, but Archinect directed us to an AP story in which OMA’s Ole Scheeren finally addresses the rampant concerns that have been plaguing the burned out building, and the prognosis is good. Scheeren said that the building is indeed intact and will be replaced—at what cost, who knows, though this being state-run television, does it even really matter? The AP adds that construction scaffolding is already up on the site, and Scheeren goes to great lengths to dispel apparently rampant and, as far as we can understand, ridiculous rumors that were the TVCC building to be dismantled, it would drag down the better known CCTV building because the two shared a structural system. Read More
LAVA’s Green Lycra
If you find yourself in Sydney, Australia before June 10, you might want to run by the Customs House to see Green Void, which has an earlike affinity to Marsyas, Anish Kapoor’s 2002 sculpture for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Read More
CCTV Day 2: We’re Sorry
The remains of yesterday's tragic fire. (drea_beijing/Flickr)
As images of a surprisingly intact TVCC building emerge after yesterday’s inferno, the China Central Television network (CCTV) was forced to admit that a fireworks display put on by its employees caused the fire to its iconic new headquarters complex in Beijing, designed by OMA’s Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren.
TVCC Blaze: Report From the Ground
Crowds and guards outside the smoldering TVCC building (photo: Aric Chen)
From Beijing, longtime AN contributor Aric Chen writes in with these observations:
As of 1:00 AM, hundreds of people were still gathered around police barriers (some holding their dogs), taking photos and videos of the smoldering building, while water cannons were intermittently shot at both the north and south facades. It’s a misty night and, through the haze, the building, which was lit by floodlights, appeared to be burnt to a crisp. From the south side, two fires were still flaring at what looked like about the 15th and 30th floors.
CCTV Hotel Ablaze (UPDATE)
One of countless images streaming across the Internet of the iconic project on fire. (news.ifeng.com)
Images and reports are spiraling out across the Web of a fire taking hold at the hotel adjacent OMA’s CCTV Tower. (Building calls it the TVCC tower.) Details, at least in English, remain slim, but a translation of Chinese reports suggest the fire broke out at 9:21 p.m. local time, or just after eight o’clock this morning in New York. A call to OMA’s New York office did confirm that the fire was in their building, which is still under construction, though all further inquiries were directed to the Rotterdam HQ. Read More
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