Absurdity, Allegory and China

The Television Culture Centre, Beijing, CN August 11, 2010, 11:04 AM An extremely shitty air day in the business heart of the Kingdom. ________

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The CCTV Building project has been rife with rumors since before the first hole was dug, and the latest one (via niubi at Twitter) was spotted on Weibao, a Chinese microblogging service. The rough translation (and I stress “rough”) is “Heard that my foolish masters’ big underpants scorched little brother [TVCC] must be demolished tomorrow, [...]

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At the end of June Vanity Fair, in a web exclusive, published Vanity Fair’s World Architecture Survey: the Complete Results. We asked the world’s leading architects, critics, and deans of architecture schools two questions: what are the five most important buildings, bridges, or monuments constructed since 1980, and what is the greatest work of architecture [...]

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It usually takes me a bit of time to go through my photos after a trip to my favorite site in Beijing, the CCTV Bldg. project (or what I sometimes refer to as metaphor central) on the East Third Ring Road. In the last few days I have finally gotten around to looking through what [...]

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There is a perennial incompleteness that haunts mainland Chinese cities, second and third tier cities as well as the nation’s capital. In the foreground of the above photo you can see scaffolding, green construction mesh,  and the top of a tent where migrant workers live in the very heart of the Central Business District, across [...]

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Here are some photos of the CCTV in color, all taken in the late afternoon/early evening, April 23, 2010

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Photos of the continuing project. (click for bigger pic)

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I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I went to New York and was confronted with billboards that said, “Civilized Brooklyn.” Or if I were walking through Paris and ran into large public displays that said “Civilized Belleville.” Of course I would wonder, “Why is this being addressed at all?” A weekend [...]

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Curious article in the Shanghai Daily today (h/t @niubi on Twitter), reporting on a Beijing News article regarding repairs to the TVCC building, the burned and lesser brother/neighbor of the iconic CCTV Bldg. This has been expected since Rem Koolhaas stated in a WSJ piece The Sky’s No Longer the Limit back in May 2009 [...]

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Here’s one just because I like it. And it reminds me of my favorite, still-under-construction Chinese television station project. For the rest of this very cool new font, called Priori Acute, from Jonathan Barnbrook’s font family for digital type foundry Emigre, go here. (h/t Core77) Priori Acute is the latest addition to the Priori family. [...]

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