There is now an odd mojo-y smoky shadow hanging over the place that will not interpret well though the Chinese filter. Can you imagine a great rush to book into a hotel with 44 floors that has been through what appears on endless videos as a barely contained eruption of Hell, even though the containment might have everything to do with the superior engineering of the construction.

While the rebuilding (“repairs”) is not a surprise, the Shanghai Daily is also reporting that it will still be a five-star hotel.

After repairs, the building will retain the original look, according to Beijing Urban Construction Group. It will accommodate a five-star hotel, a 1,500-seat theatre and other support facilities as designed. The futuristic-looking 5-billion-yuan (US$735 million) CCTV complex features a pair of enormous, leaning buildings of black glass and steel. The fire in February engulfed an adjacent 159-meter, 44-story building that was to house a luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which was only weeks away from opening.

What is noteworthy in the Shanghai Daily piece is that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (MO) is referred to in the past tense. Does this mean that the MO has managed to back out of the deal, and that there will be another hotel company stepping in? I cannot imagine that the MO would still be involved with this project, seeing as how the partner/owner, China Central Television, was responsible for its destruction. In February 2009 Mandarin Oriental employees, along with their families who had moved to Beijing, were nearing the opening day when everything went up in fire and smoke. Subsequently the families moved out of Beijing.

It will be interesting to see who ends up with their name on the side of this one. If it is still the Mandarin Oriental I would be surprised. With the images of the building so publicly and wildly exploding still vivid, and with so many videos of the conflagration posted on the internet, I don’t see people queuing up to reserve rooms. If I were to bet, I’d put my money on a state-run five-star hotel. Besides the obvious jinx factor, what international company in their right mind would want to partner up with CCTV on this one? But if it ends up still being the Mandarin Oriental, you can bet they cut a sweet deal, since CCTV would probably do anything not to have this look as bad as it is.
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Another curious bit in the Shanghai Daily article:

More than 20 people have been arrested over the accident, including staff from CCTV, the fireworks company, the building’s designer, builder, supervisor and suppliers.

They will be tried in two groups, with the first batch due to go to trial before mid February and the rest around March, according to earlier reports.

If staff from the” building’s designer” have been arrested, does this mean someone (or more) from OMA is going to be on trial shortly? Anyone know anything about this?
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Update: January 26, 2010, 8:45 PM (+8 UTC)

The article in the Shanghai Daily stated that staff from the “building’s designer” were involved in the upcoming trials. A spokesman for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has assured me that no personnel from OMA or ECADI are involved in the upcoming trials related to the TVCC fire last February.

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.