New York Times had an article on the “Wild Wild East,” the world of avant-garde Beijing architecture.
“Many of the projects were commissioned for the 2008 Olympic Games, for which Beijing originally planned to spend a staggering $37 billion — more than three times what Athens paid — as it remade the city and its infrastructure. The proposed new venues include a 100,000-seat Olympic stadium by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron wrapped in a “bird’s nest” of tangled columns, and a swimming center by the Australian firm PTW with a facade of translucent, lightweight panels to be inflated to resemble huge bubbles.
The rest of Beijing was hardly left out. The French architect Paul Andreu designed a $300 million, dome-shaped national theater for the heart of the city. Norman Foster and his London-based firm Foster & Partners offered a new $2 billion airport based on a dragon motif. And after an extensive international competition two years ago, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas was chosen to build what his firm has called its “most ambitious project ever”: a dramatic new headquarters for CCTV, China’s state-run broadcast company. The looping, O-shaped skyscraper, with a budget of at least $600 million, was a collaboration between Mr. Koolhaas and a partner, Ole Scheeren, for a site in the heart of the booming central business district here.”
The same author also had another short article on Beijing’s Truly Bad Buildings.
