Absurdity, Allegory and China

In early June I went to the CCTV Bldg. to have a look and what I found cocked my brow a few degrees: on the roof of the northwest tower, Tower 1, there was a helipad, a circular affair that oddly took the edge off the well-defined linear profile. A circle of all things! As [...]

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I’ve just arrived back in Tianjin from four days in Beijing, and there’s so much to talk about I hardly know where to begin. Photos of the CCTV Headquarters Building seems to be as good as place as any while I collect my thoughts.
There’s the bullet train from Tianjin to Beijing (and vice versa, though [...]

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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 [...]

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I have a hard time sleeping. Always have. Living in a construction site - ten years in Tianjin - has done little to help me quietly nod off. Odd and loud sounds can break the quietest nights, and we’ve given up sitting outside on our open porch since it is hardly relaxing sharing the soundscape [...]

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In case you missed it – I did – on May 31, 2008 Nike projected a slideshow on four sides of the two-legs of the CCTV Headquarters Building. Twenty-six years ago when Ridley Scott gave us Bladerunner, China wasn’t geared up enough to show it (something tells me that, given the opportunity, SARFT would do [...]

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My silence lately has everything to do with my personal project of the past seven months. I have been wandering around the east Third Ring Road photographing the CCTV construction project and the adjoining neighborhoods. Though my reasons for doing this are various, I seem to understand the underlying motivations more so than I [...]

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I’ve been in involved in a project that has me looking back through my photos, and I came upon these (and many others also) that I had not yet seen. The different angles and constantly shifting light makes it new each time I go to take photos. Enjoy, if this sort of thing rocks your [...]

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It’s been a bad week here. The Sichuan earthquake is, of course, dominating the news and finally kicking the torch relay out of the spots. In fact, there has been much Chinese criticism of the relay now that it has returned to home territory, with calls for it to be suspended and the money saved [...]

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Here are a few more photos from the East Third Ring Rd on Saturday afternoon. The light was right.

Technorati Tags: gourley China CCTV Koolhaas

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I went by the CCTV HQ Building late Saturday afternoon just to make sure that it’s on-schedule. Though there’s still a lot of steel showing, I expect it will be impressively shiny and fully-sheathed, in full-Olympic dazzle, by August 8. I also expect that if there are any problems with the construction schedule, this site [...]

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