Tangshan Museum of Urbanism

I worked on this project back in the spring of 2007, and within 18 months, it is completed. Amazing photos from URBANUS.

TVCC building in flames

Right now, on the last day of the Lunar Festival, Rem Koolhaas' TVCC hotel building is engulfed in flames. I wasn't able to get to the other side, but it is quite a dramatic scene right now in the CBD, with the 3rd ring closed to traffic, and the entire western facade is destroyed. Columns of troops were marching down the street, and spectators were told to move away from the building.

I think this is, perhaps, a sign of things to come.. a thorough questioning of current avant-garde architecture is due. In this current economic climate, it is tough to sell this kind of architecture, and even tougher to sell now with this TVCC fire, which might have moved up the building quite fast because of the continuous folding corrugated metal facade.

It is too bad that this building- highly anticipated in architectural circles here in Beijing- was destroyed just months before its opening...

A very interesting article in the WSJ about what it says about society when it accepts fake over real, simulated over real- most evidently shown in the past month from Yo Yo Ma's inauguration cello that produced no sound, to the lip-syncing Jennifer Hudson at the SuperBowl. 

"The performers, you see, care too much about their art to risk presenting something substandard. But what is art without risks? Any live performance is a high-wire act, and the wire can be wobbly. Nowadays, it seems that -- when it really counts -- musicians are willing to put the wire on the pavement and walk along it as if they were doing something just as daring as the real thing."

Makes me wonder too about what the public thinks about authenticity of materials in architecture. Again.. back to Ruskin (see below).