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.

Implied in the can/can’t tell axiom is that other, equally yin-yangish truth, that some people can get jokes and some people can’t. There is nothing quite so disarming as telling a good joke well only to have it DOA as the punch line sails hopelessly into oblivion over the receiver’s head (imagine Sarah Palin thumbing through The New Yorker). If you have to explain a joke it morphs from good humor into bad pain. Understanding Do you think I really wanted a 12-inch pianist is critical affirmation (and confirmation) that the last few minutes of your life – of telling this particular joke! – have been time well spent (and mensurable). But when all you get back after delivering the dagger is that doe-eyed “Ahh… yeah, and then what?” look, it’s as if you have fallen into a gray hole of ungetting, where time is looped, twisted and choked, where the heavens cave in as gravity fails, and for a brief flash you’re sure you’ve caught a glimpse of sickle-shouldered Death, only to be thrown back out on the other side (which is really the side you started from) as plumb and level come out of juddery warp and slowly steady back into focus. You’ve survived, but not by much. Jokes, after all, are serious business.

If you are not familiar with the recent/retro hoopla over the CCTV project as a giant pornographic display foisted upon unsuspecting leaders who, in the race to go Western, allowed themselves to be used in ultra-whorish fashion, have a look here at retired architecture professor Xiao Mo’s short essay entitled The Structural Similarity of the CCTV Headquarters and Hindquarters, and here at Rem Koolhaas’ artful dodge and a link to Xiao Mo’s clarification (Ch.) who “regrets the offhand manner in which he introduced the idea into his discussion of the CCTV building.” The blocked but irrepressible Danwei has been keeping up with all the bilingual salacious details.

The CCTV project as a giant symbol of “genital worship” has raised enough stink for an official response: the China Daily has waded and weighed in here, bringing Ai Weiwei into the mix on the “You don’t get it” side of the aisle, which is where officials want people to be. (In the culture of unforgiving and unforgotten reciprocities, the government now owes Ai Weiwei one. So, how many Sichuan students lost their lives in the May 12, 2008 earthquake when poorly built schools collapsed in unfathomable numbers?)

The Global Times cast their net a little wider and dragged a handful of professors into the fray, one from as far away as France, a ploy they wouldn’t have tried sixteen months ago when all things Gallic were sharp objects of “hurt feelings.”

G. Pascal, a professor at University Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, said, “Architecture is culture, we’d better talk about it with humor.”

As I’ve mentioned a time or two in here, the CCTV project is a joke. But it is much more sophisticated than the crude version that Misters Xiao and He imagine it to be.  Their vision of the joke is an adolescent pull-my-finger gag, an unimaginative and predictable stunt of xenophobia.

In what can only be interpreted as neo-RedGuardism (or Conservative Confucianism a la Ming), Professor Xiao, a retired architecture professor from Tsinghua (pinyin: Qinghua) University has a solution. Or rather he agrees with the solution put forth by He Qing, “an art critic and a professor at Zhejiang University College of Art,” who Xiao aligns himself with.

Mr. He Qing proposed that the main building and the annex should both be blown up because they are a great shame for the Chinese people and cannot be allowed to exist. I basically agree, for I cannot think of any reason not to blow them up. Seize the initiative, is the age-old lesson! May that explosion shake awake those lost Chinese architects and those elite who even now are beating the drum for Chinese culture to fall in line with the west.

Sink the fleets! We’re staying home! Learn from Uncle Lei Feng!

If it wasn’t already pretty clear that CCTV torched their own building, Xiao and He would, no doubt, be in custody for tax fraud, revealing state secrets, internet addiction or some combination of the three.

This building has been controversial from the beginning and that it would remain so – especially after the dramatic burning of what Xiao refers to as the male member of the genitalia exposition – is not really news. But it really is good fun, full of half-wit bit players seeing all sorts of pornographic images in the clouds. But again the scab has been picked, setting it all to oozing once again. In what can only be seen as another lousy joke, the GFW (Great Firewall of China) has weighed in to.

And in a twist anyone could have predicted, the search phrase “Koolhaas CCTV” is now a sensitive term: Baidu returns no results, claiming violation of national laws and regulations.

The battle for this message, the struggle for the meaning of this metaphor will be one that promises to not go away, unless, of course it eventually falls over and everyone finally sees it as the head of a very large weapon.

August 21, 2009, 5:35 AM, fm beneath the Guanghua Lu flyover (click for larger photo)

For a few more photos of the CCTV project go here.

Beijing with Koolhaas Background from Jim Gourley on Vimeo.

click photo for larger version

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. Or, rather, one of the big stories (More on another future problem below.)

Arup’s Cecil Balmond is supposedly either in Beijing or on his way to assess the structure. Not much from OMA, other than a short mention of the ‘tragedy’ on their website. I assume that Rem Koolhaas will make an appearance soon enough, if he hasn’t already. I also imagine that he slips in and out fairly quietly.
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I believe that another huge problem facing this project in the future – if, in fact, the structure is recoverable – will be the public relations blitz that will need to be done in order to sell this site as a viable hotel, especially one with 44 floors. 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.

Another related story to watch would be the potential legal battle between CCTV and Mandarin Oriental Hotel, both of whom are well aware of the superstition rider that this building now carries. Will CCTV take the high road here, since they are responsible for burning down their own house? Well, if they do it will be the first time in their history that they would choose an honorable path over their penchant for constantly slogging down the lowest road. I’m not looking for any lost cherries on this one.
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I have not had the urge to go see it. I’ll wait for the crowds to thin out and then go have a look. I’ve been asked what I would have focused on if I’d been on-site the night of the fire, and there is no question what I would have been shooting: the burning TVCC as reflected from the CCTV HQ towers. There were already enough folks going for the flaming money shot, and there have been some real beauts. But I look forward to spending some time with it later in the dawn/early morning light before the city gets cranked and rolling.
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I have had much activity on my Flickr site regarding my CCTV HQ Project set, and this one has drawn the most attention:

West face of TVCC, March 15, 2008

At the end of June I was in Paris and happened upon a copy of the Architecture and Urbanism, July 2005 Special Issue on the “CCTV by OMA.” It was not cheap, and I walked away from it, though the details of this thick, glossy issue were too much to … walk away from. Later Beth went back to the shop and bought the copy. The main attractions were the architectural renderings, along with plans, sections and elevations of both main buildings in the complex, as well as drawings and renderings of the other buildings and proposed public spaces within the borders of this massive project.

Last week Jeremy at Danwei mentioned the following concerning the helipad:

On a related subject, the iconic new CCTV building designed by Rem Koolhaas has had its clean lines ruined by the addition of a helicopter landing pad on the roof.

The gossip in Beijing is that Koolhaas was enraged by the late-breaking design change, …

In a follow up to my comment where I mentioned the Architecture and Urbanism special issue he posted the following:

I called a staff member of Koolhaas’ firm OMA in Beijing. He told me he was too busy right now to find out what happened: essentially “no comment”.

Below are three photos (click on the photos for larger versions) from the issue showing the helipad as part of the long-term plan. If there is a rub it is probably not over the helipad, but rather the change that grew it from a square contained within the perimeter of the footprint, into a circle that overhangs the edges, as well as raising the deck of the pad above the high point of the roof. It’s all about the mashing (not the meshing) of shapes, and how some things can, unexpectedly, change. It is, after all, CCTV.