Absurdity, Allegory and China

From today’s NYT Nikolai Ouroussoff’s In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China highlights the gap between the ideals of the architects who are transforming the face of Beijing and their client, the Chinese government. Regarding some of the higher profile projects, namely the Bird’s Nest and the CCTV Headquarters Building:

Yet a conflict over the stadium’s future underscores tensions over how the new China will be defined. The stadium is in the center of a sprawling park surrounded by regimented rows of housing towers. After the Games, Mr. Herzog and Mr. de Meuron hope to transform the building into a vast public forum and a visual anchor for the community.

The government prefers to build a fence around it, which would eliminate the parklike openness that is one of its most attractive features. A local developer has proposed creating a subterranean shopping mall at one end of the structure, further undermining the design’s public spirit.

“The building is made to be open,” Mr. Herzog said. “It is a work of public sculpture.” Still, as the architect, all he can do is press for flexibility. “Even if they put up a fence, they can take it down again one day in the future,” he said hopefully.

Mr. Koolhaas faces similar strains in his headquarters for CCTV, the state television authority, several miles to the south in Beijing’s new business district. Long negotiations have unfolded over how much public access will be allowed: to the architect’s distress, CCTV’s directors have threatened to close off two public roads that cut through the site. An enormous plaza will also be restricted to the company’s employees.

None of this is really a surprise. That it could or would have unfolded any differently than it is unfolding is the only things that could possibly have been a surprise. One has the sense that these major projects were always quietly earmarked as privileged spaces with conceptual and electronic walls as high as the one that surrounds the Forbidden City. And those “regimented rows of housing towers” which Herzog and de Meuron hoped would be anchored by their stadium will, no doubt, meet the same fate as other regimented rows of housing have met in Beijing.

It remains to be seen where this will lead. For centuries, architects have aspired to create buildings that enlighten or transform civilization, only to see them remain isolated splendors, with little impact on society at large. That may prove to be the case in China, too.