How does he deal with a country where democracy is a work in progress? “I’m happy you use the term ‘work in progress,’ because I think that is the essence of China,” he says. “It’s not a perfect situation, but what is important is that CCTV [China Central Television] is not directly an element of the state.

In 2005 as the project began emerging from the ground, in a special issue of Architecture+Urbanism dedicated to the CCTV project, Ole Scheeren who was then the head architect of the project – in 2009 he left the firm and set out on his own – stated in the introduction to the issue:

As the national television station, CCTV has a direct relationship to the State — is information filter and propaganda machine — and receives subsidies to fulfil this role.

Scheeren goes on to say that the “economic dependency [of CCTV] is deceptive,” that the amount of tax revenues CCTV returns to the State through advertising revenues outlegs the State subsidies by “four or five times,” and that the amount of return could pay for the headquarters building in just a year. Whether that is true or not is anyone’s guess, since the only ones who might possibly know the true cost of the project are the bean counters in the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, though I imagine the duties are sliced and diced so thoroughly that no one other than a single guy – or a single Top Secret redline – knows the actual cost to date. Suffice it to say that any early estimates have long since been mightily heaved beneath the bus as costs have, literally, skyrocketed through the roof (remember the TVCC fire?). But I wander.

The more interesting comparison is what is the difference between Koolhaas’s “CCTV is not directly an element of the state,” and Scheeren’s “CCTV has a direct relationship with the State.” There is obviously a hair-splitting semantic distinction here, though the bigger question still remains, “If not ‘direct’ then how would one describe CCTV’s relationship to the State?”

The CCTV English: About Us page clearly states that “China Central Television (CCTV) is the national TV station of the People´s Republic of China and it is one of China’s most important news broadcast companies. Today, CCTV has become one of China’s most influential media outlets.”

Again, this doesn’t really clear it up, though “national” in relation to CCTV clearly has a different meaning than the “national” in, say, NBC. The National Broadcasting Company does not introduce itself as the “national TV station of the United States of America.” That sounds like something we’d expect to see from the Murdoch/Fox folks, though even they have just enough sense to restrain themselves; “fair and balanced” is about as far as they can stretch it without coming completely apart at the seams.

Wikipedia puts it thusly:

China Central Television falls under the supervision of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television which is in turn subordinate to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China [which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government]. A Vice Minister of the state council serves as chairman of CCTV.
…
The network’s principal directors and other officers are appointed by the State, and so are the top officials at local conventional television stations in mainland China; nearly all of them are restricted to broadcasting within their own province or municipality.

The suctioning tentacles of “State” feel wetly icky and pretty direct to me. So, why this distancing by Koolhaas? Why this denial of directness? More Koolhaas leg-pulling? Perhaps. Or is this just wishful thinking, a musing attempt to deflect the criticism that OMA has received for building one of the great buildings of the age for a reactive totalitarian government that is getting more reactive and repressive every day? Hard to know. And I’m betting Koolhaas won’t ever say.

There is not much more to say other than I am glad that the test took place on the 20^th and not the 21^st. Tonight the air quality in Beijing is hazardously Beyond Index which means that breathing what passes for air can be deadly. It’s the contemporary equivalent and stealth mass marketing of slow slicing or death by ten thousand cuts, or let’s add 5,000 cars per week (as reported in the SCMP) to the already hopelessly knotted Beijing rigor motors highway system. To understand what “crazy bad” air is (PM2.5; 584.0; 500; Beyond Index), have a look here. Last night, on the other hand, at 1900 local time while I was meandering through the Central Business District (CBD) taking photos, the same monitoring station at the U.S. Embassy, just three kms or so north of the CCTV HQ Building complex, registered PM2.5; 138.0; 193; Unhealthy. If the lighting test had been scheduled for this evening I would not be out there gagging on this gunk. Staying indoors tonight with my IQAir cranking.

Below are some of the photos that I took last evening. For more photos have a look here. There is a slideshow option that works well enough. I am still adding to this set, so if you like them and want more check back over the next day or two. For a larger version click on the photos below.

Monday, October 11 was a very good day, and the AQI was in the Good to Moderate range. So, with air to breathe and autumn light to die for, I headed over to the CBD (Central Business District) and took photos in the vicinity of the CCTV Headquarters Building project. As you can see below, the work on the TVCC (what was almost the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel) continues on, and it has received a new head, which was not in the original design. For better quality and larger photos, click on the photos below.

I have mentioned several times in the past that in the land of little news, rumors – once they’ve reached some unspecified critical mass – have a way of muscling in, for better or worse, and commanding attention until they are either dispelled or deemed true enough to be spun into fool’s gold. This one’s pretty specific when it comes to positing a time: “tomorrow,” which happens to be today. A quick trip over to the site will be enough to find out the truth of it, though there’s nothing to say that it won’t be tomorrow, next week, or never.

I have heard many rumors concerning this project that I have reflexively blown off. The proof, as always, is in the building. The architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, when asked in an interview about dogma and  and theories answered, “I discount the theories and look at the building,” which is also good advice when addressing rumors. I have heard too many concerning the CCTV Building, two of the most recent being that the interior work on the iconic building is being done on the cheap (not surprising if it turns out to be true, given what I can only imagine is a staggering cost overrun for the entire project, due in great part to CCTV burning down the little brother of the complex), and that CCTV is looking for a buyer, as they try to distance themselves from their eponymous, though dead-in-water, flagship.  Is their any truth to any of these rumors? I have no idea, though they are believable at some level – especially the lack of quality of the interior work if the project is, in fact, on the auction block. If CCTV were actually able to pawn it off, who would/could possibly buy it? There are so many problems attached to this possibility that I am not going to go down this road more than a single step: What would a new name do to the building’s global high profile and everyone attached to it, given the fact that it is still one of the great architectural works of the fledgling 21st century? Rumor-generated questions of this sort are interesting to play with, though not worth spending too much time with until a for sale sign appears on the strange beanie of a helo deck, which will happen when hell freezes over, allowing George Steinbrenner an opportunity to skate (apologies to Bill “Spaceman” Lee).

I never dreamed that this project (the buildings as well as my personal tracking of it) would still be in progress nearly halfway through 2010. Though I have no privileged revelations on an actual deadline, I can easily imagine that it will continue for at least another year. When I was there nearly three (3) weeks ago I was surprised that there was so little on-site activity. I was in Beijing last weekend on other business, and though I didn’t take any photos of the project, I did pass by it on Saturday afternoon and saw that the crane in the four b&w photos below is now above the TVCC roof line. Next month we will move to Beijing, which will make it easier to document the changes that are, no doubt, imminently about to happen. Though I’ve heard – as everyone else has also heard – that the TVCC will be reconstructed, the lack of activity is stymying. What I can imagine is that since the fire there have been colossal negotiations between who knows how many parties. Though I believe that it will be rebuilt – I’ve been saying this from just a few days after the fire – what I’ve learned after years in China is that you never know what will actually happen until after it has happened, and even then there’s a very good chance that you still won’t know what just happened. Somewhere there is a chengyu that states this much more succinctly.

At any rate, here are several photos I shot in the late afternoon of April 23^rd. (Click for larger photo).

For a more obsessive listing of photos from this project you can check out my CCTV HQ Bldg set at Flickr.

CCTV project from the east end of the Kerry Centre

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 the East Third Ring Road from one of the landmark architectural projects in Beijing, which itself was rendered “incomplete” when the clients, CCTV (China Central Television) set their building (left), the TVCC, on fire in February 2009 during an illegal fireworks display a few short months before the opening of the building as the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The fire was responsible for the death of a firefighter and disruption of hundreds of lives, and the sparking of a spectacular corruption case that has seen many hauled off to jail. (Yesterday the China Daily reported that two-and-a-half months after the beginning of the fire trial twenty (20) people “have received jail terms ranging from three to seven years.” Xu Wei, the former head of construction was given the stiffest sentence and was also pinned with the sole responsibility of ordering the catastrophic and fatal fireworks display.)

In the foreground of the photo is a small square at the east end of the Kerry Center, one of the prime five-star hotels in Beijing. It’s as if no one can quite make up their mind as to what the final product is supposed to actually look like, so the decision is made to do it all over again. This particular site has been in a state of constant construction or repair for at least three years (and if my memory was a bit better I could probably add a few more years to that total), cluttering a space that could very well be left alone and allowed to evolve into a niche of quiet sanity in the midst of all the frenzy, a place to sit and watch the reconstruction of the TVCC. Is this an issue of indecisveness, poor quality construction or both?

In this photo the white crane in front of the TVCC is in the process of being raised, which I assume has something to do with the renovation from the extensive fire damage, as it has been reported that the building will be reconstructed and serve – sometime in the unspecified future – as a hotel as per the original plan.

Last month the China Daily ran an interview with Ashley Howlett, a construction lawyer who “leads the Greater China construction practice as a partner with Jones Day in Beijing,” entitled Poor construction quality keeps foreign property buyers away. It is a particularly critical assessment of construction in Beijing and, by extension, all of China. Anyone who has lived in China for more than a week is able to understand Howlett’s appraisal of the lack of quality that should scare off anyone with the least thought of buying residential or commercial property.

The quickly built but cheaply made buildings in Beijing will not literally fall down, but will deteriorate. Wall paint will peel and elevators won’t work. Buildings will become uncomfortable because they will not have been properly maintained. That’s when people will start to realize they’ve paid a lot of money to buy a place in the Central Business District and they’ve paid management charges, but nothing works and everything looks really poor. But the developers will probably be long gone by then, so I’m not sure what people will do.

Many buildings in Beijing are built with the cheapest materials available, which tend to degrade quickly. This is a worryingly common phenomenon. There are many buildings here that appear as if they are 10 or 15 years old, but are really just five years old. That’s a little bit sad.

This is the main reasons why there is a persistent, unfinished appearance to so many projects in high profile neighborhoods that seem to be permanently under construction. Most (though not all) places that are not wrapped in the construction shroud are in the process of high-speed decay. My default response to seeing a quiet neighborhood is to wonder how long it will be before major renovation commences or, as is happening far too often, demolition will begin.

I am not qualified to judge what this means economically, though it seems like a plan to keep migrant workers employed. How long this can be afforded or tolerated is just a matter of time. As homeowners watch the inevitable depreciation of their investments I can only imagine that they will not be happy. I also imagine that this has already commenced.

When I first moved to China a dozen years ago we lived in a building that had sewer gas problems of biblical proportions. Our building was not an anomaly. When I asked about a simple plumbing J trap it was as if I were asking a science fiction question. My conclusion was that the entire Chinese indoor plumbing system had been turned over to people who had never used such a thing. If you had seen construction sites back in the late 1990s you would understand how I’d come to that conclusion: workers slept in the open spaces they were building, and each construction site had it’s own kitchen as well as shallow latrine. Things have generally gotten a bit better, but the improvements in the quality of construction has not kept stride with the inflated property values. As long as workers are paid what can only be described as barely a subsistence wage the problem of poor quality construction will continue to plague China. In a land where labor shortages have never been an issue  – where one person fills a hole as well as any other – undervalued labor guarantees an inferior product, and construction becomes a constant state. That is, as long as the money holds out.

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.

Personal anecdotal observation: Though I can be a bit obsessive about some things, keeping personal weather records isn’t one of them, though I do have a good memory. When we first arrived in 1998 the fog-days were generally confined to late October/November, picking up again in late February/early March. The dry winter cold would set in, rivers and canals would freeze and the temperature would rarely poke much above 0 (C) during the day, thus ensuring at least 2-3 fog-free months. The warmer winters of the last several years have increased the fog-day possibilities to cover the entire winter, thus playing hell with local air pollution indexes.

Though today is clear in Tianjin, if the last several years are any indication, we will probably not see the temperature drop below zero and stay there for any extended length of time. We will still get those brilliant winter Siberian highs that turn the sky a dazzling Qinghai blue, and there will still be some ice on the rivers and canals, though I suspect that the fog and increased smog days, exacerbated by the ever-increasing number of cars, will continue to grow as the temperature and dew point get closer more often. This is, as I’ve noted above, anecdotal observations on what appears to be, at the very least, a local warming trend.

Below are a few photos from the afternoon of December 9, 2009, along the East Third ring Road in the vicinity of the CCTV HQ project. It was grim. The photos make it appear better than it actually was.

click photo for larger version