Absurdity, Allegory and China

Last March I wrote a post anticipating the Olympic protests in support of a ‘free’ Tibet. Nothing prescient, mind you; anyone with a tooth in their head, and a lot of folks without, could have anticipated attempts at extreme displays.
If your plan is to make a scene, I am asking you to review your reasons [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

While the earthquake disaster moves from the primary focus of rescue to the grimmer work of recovery and cleanup, there will, no doubt, be some hard questions asked, especially regarding the safety of schools. In fact, parents are asking those questions now as they sort through the bodies and the rubble. As the news continues [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

Ciren Wangma

[Read more →]