Absurdity, Allegory and China

This one almost got by me. (Thanks to MMG for bringing it to my attention.) Rem Koolhaas was featured in the Wall Street Journal last month in a piece entitled The Sky’s No Longer the Limit, concerning architecture and the the end of this latest golden age as major building projects throughout the world have screeched to a halt.

The CCTV skyscraper marked the climax to a world-wide boom in iconic architectural projects that commenced in 1997, with the opening of Frank Gehry’s shimmering Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. One of several innovative buildings designed by Western architects for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Mr. Koolhaas’s headquarters for China Central Television quickly became a signature of the Beijing skyline. Now, with a global recession threatening future architectural projects of all kinds, the building seems like a souvenir of days gone by, even though it has yet to be occupied.

What is more interesting to me is Koolhaas’ comment on the TVCC, the hotel that three short months ago looked to be the poster building for “fire in a barrel” architecture. After spending as much time with it as I have, I was amazed by the lines of the post-fire structure, and three days after the fire I commented on it here.

The lines look to be consistent with the pre-fire lines, though what it looks like inside is still, for me, a guess. I don’t believe that there is any fear of collapse, though it was obviously something that looked apparent during the conflagration….

If, in fact, the structure is salvageable, this will become the story, which may be the silver lining for Arup and OMA. There are not many engineering tests that have been so publicly witnessed and so viewed, via youtube, by so many. In the past I’ve told people that if I were in Beijing during an earthquake and had a choice to pick a spot to be if the big one rolls through, I’d choose to be in one of those two buildings. A fire, obviously, is something quite different, but the engineering of this building may very well become the biggest and most spectacular story.

In the WSJ piece Koolhaas addresses this issue, which goes against the swirl of rumors that have the building imminently being razed.

According to CCTV, the fire was caused by an unauthorized fireworks display, believed to have been organized on the site to celebrate the end of the Lunar New Year holiday. Images of the blaze were quickly distributed by Beijing citizens, who captured the fire on their cellphones and camcorders. Those initial images of the blaze suggested that the tower might be nearly destroyed. However, said Mr. Koolhaas, “they are simply rebuilding it as it was, because there was no structural damage.”

Is this wishful thinking on Koolhaas’ part? I’m sticking with my initial gut reaction on this one: that OMA and Arup have withstood the test by fire. But will superior engineering be enough to save it from the spectacle of it exploding in the Beijing sky? And where is Mandarin Oriental in this? Are they about to stake their future Beijing business on the worldwide perception of a building that looked like a giant fire in a barrel? The WSJ has just reported that China Replaces Chief of CCTV:

In a brief report, state-run Xinhua news agency said 61-year-old Zhao Huayong is being replaced because he had reached retirement age. China’s usual retirement age is 60.

Although there was no official mention of the fire in the announcement of Mr. Zhao’s retirement, what will CCTV and the Propaganda Ministry do if, in fact, the structural integrity was not compromised in the fire? Lots of bad juju attached to this one. Lots of questions too. But OMA and Arup may come out of this on the high end, no matter which way CCTV and Mandarin Oriental end up going.