tvcc

The People’s Republic of China Central Television runs eighteen channels twenty-four hours a day. However mostly airing Chinese productions, they show several US programs such as lost and 24. The content is regulated by the government, and therefore they re-ceive subsidies from the state. Although reform has been continually pushing the programming on CCTV stations, the news has stayed heavily regulated, requiring them to filter or disperse information. CCTV is the largest television provider within China and is constantly working to develop their international audience and programming. To create an international presence, CCTV held a competition for a new headquarters complex within the Central Business District of Beijing. They timed the completion to coincide with the 2008 Olym-pics, drawing upon the incredible international media pull the the city.

OMA won the competition for the Media Complex held in 2002, which brought in entries from some of the worlds top architects. Many traditional master plans were submitted with a tall tower taking up a small part of the site and low level structures filling in the rest of the blocks. OMA’s plan was recognized as inovative and forward thinking, and was chosen for the commission from a committee including Charles Jencks and Arata Isozaki. Because OMA is a foreign office, the Chinese Government required collaboration with a domestic firm on the design and execution. The East China Architecture & Design Institute acted as the local architects assisting throughout the design and construction process. OMA also consulted AMO, its media and research branch.

Other firm entries included:-Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM)-Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC (KPF) -Dominique Perrault Architect -Toyo Ito Associates-China Architecture Design & Research Institute -Beijing Institute of Architectural Design & Research -East China Architectural Design & Reseach Institute Co., Ltd

“The project is one of the most visionary since modernism and beyond. It pushes the limits of architecture, not just formally but, more importantly, socially, culturally, and technologically through the reinvention of the tall building. The various functions of buildings, their spatial articulation and organization, have been completely rethought to provoke a new kind of collective construct with the potential for social and urban change.” -Tina di Carlo, assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum for Modern Art (MoMA)

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1 - http://english.cctv.com/2 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=123 - http://www.e-architect.co.uk/beijing/central_china_tv.htm4 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=12

Rem Koolhaas graduated from the Architec-tural Association in London in 1972 and went on to study at Cornell University. He found-ed the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 along with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He is the only remaining founding partner and heads both OMA and AMO, the conceptual branch of OMA focused on social, technological and economical developments as well as explor-ing areas beyond architectural and urban concerns.

Ole Scheeren joined OMA in 1995 and be-came a partner in 2002, heading the Beijing branch of OMA, responsible for their work in Asia. He graduated from the Architectural Association, and before joining OMA he col-laborated on various art projects and exhibi-tions as well as projects through his own his own firm in the UK.

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5 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=16 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=1

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Looking to China’s increasing construction and the potential for further design, Koolhaas became interested in the urban conditions of existing Chinese cities and how development

would affect them. Through Harvard’s Proj-ect on the City, he has been able to explore

the current situation and how this transitional period for the country will affect its growth. In

2002 this research gave way to “Great Leap Forward” focusing on the urban fabric and

development within China.

As OMA’s list of projects grew they cre-ated an office in Beijing to accommodate for

the increasing amount of work in Asia. Ole Scheeren, heading up the Beijing office, is the lead partner on the CCTV Compound dealing

with the design and construction.

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Chinese construction is increasing at pace with their economy, with new projects developing at an exponential rate. Mega block archi-tecture is rapidly expanding, taking over the fabric of Chinese cities. The 2008 Summer Olympics have created an explosion of new architecture within Beijing, rivaling the pace of development in the Middle East. It has drawn the top architects from the world, creating an oversized experimental playground for the profession.

Within Beijing, the Central Business District is establishing itself as the dominant economic center… It’s architecture and urbanism is the physical representation of the power and wealth of one of the largest cities in the world. This area is located on the third ring road radiating out from the Forbidden City and is easily accessible using the Dawang Road and Jingtong Expressway. Beijing is working toward developing an environmentally conscious urban fabric, using the Central Business District’s rise in development to achieve this. Within the area the government is requiring specific guidelines on new construction, such as lot coverage and public green space. The government has also removed polluting industries from the area, such as the Beijing Automotive and Motorcycle Company’s production facilities, which opened the site up for the CCTV Compound.

CCTV will be one among many towers in Bei-jing’s new Central Business District, all trying to be unique – all different expressions of vertical-ity. Instead of competing in the hopeless race for ultimate height – dominance of the skyline can only be achieved for a short period of time, and soon another, even taller building will emerge – the project proposes an iconographic compilation of two high-rise structures that actively engage the city space; CCTV and TVCC.

- A+U, July 2005 special issue

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7 - Mixing Up the Mega-Block, Global Charrette 2.0, Columbia GSAAP. New York City. 2008.8 - CCTV : Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. OMA. Tokyo. 2005.

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The CCTV media complex is the Rockefeller Center of today. CCTV lives in a different context and was built in a different manner, but it is the conceptual continuation of the Rockefeller Center, eighty years after its birth. NBC/New York = CCTV/Beijing… The complex is an all encompassing whole that fuses public space and the complete lifecycle of a media into an iconic center. Though on a smaller scale and earlier in the city’s development, CCTV will create an impact on its immediate surroundings, as well as the 300 towers to planned to come to the Central Business District, similar to the development throughout New York following the completion of the Rock-efeller Center. Thirty years after writing Delirious New York, analyzing the Rockefeller Center, Rem Koolhaas reproduces it in Beijing, affecting the culture of its surroundings creating an iconic innovation in architecture.

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9 - http://hawtaction.com/2008/07/tall-building-cctv-and-tvcc-towers-in-media-park.html

exterior folding skin exterior folding skin

hotel rooms

hotel rooms

open atrium

stru

ctur

al c

ore

TVCC is the cultural center for the CCTV headquarters. Throughout the seemingly random arrangement of public functions a continu-ous interstitial space establishes the public lobby as a continuation of the surrounding landscape. There is a blur between interior and exterior with the glass boxes extending to different lengths creating a dynamic facade. The cultural center has many public functions on the ground level including shopping, theatres, and restaurants as well as two restaurants and a sky bar on the top floor. The hotel takes up either side of the lobby and extends the full vertical length of the structure giving way to a 100m atrium that commands ones view. Guests arrive at the main entrance on the east side and await are immediately immersed in the public functions the TVCC has to offer. Immediate access is given to the pool and spa as well as other facilities such as the conference room, suspended in a box below the hotel lobby.

Arup was the engineering company responsible for the structural design of the TVCC. The cultural center consists of a 300 room hotel, made up of two towers, and a collection of separate buildings housing various public amenities, such as a theatre, digital cinema, ex-hibition hall, recording studios, and audiovisual rooms. These different structures are covered by a single “long-span spaceframe roof that wraps up and over the hotel to form a canopy for the whole development.” Spacing out the two hotel towers is an atrium running from the public lobby to the top, requiring an interesting structural response within this seismic region.

To address the vertical gravity load, the towers are held up by a simple frame system, which also provides a secondary ductile stability system. This system helps stabilize each tower along the longitudinal axis. Due to the Atrium, the core was offset, providing the larg-est internal space, resulting in an eccentricity in the stability system. To resolve this, the core and wrapping enclosure on the one side, was counteracted by designing a mega-braced frame in the wrapping enclosure on the opposite side. The wrapping enclosure, tying the structure together, acts as a large shear wall, with varying strength according to the necessary loads, and what additional support it receives(from the core on the one side). This provided an adequate structural response to the wind loads occurring along the trans-verse axis. Also, as the structural scale decreases, each of the hotel rooms extending out from the frame is supported by cantilevered beams varying in length.

10 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=12 11 - http://www.arup.com/eastasia/feature.cfm?pageid=400012 - http://www.arup.com/eastasia/feature.cfm?pageid=4000

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TVCC is actually made up of several different buildings.

A structural skin is then wrapped over them to create a single structure

A cladding is applied afterwards to create a continuous facade

grey = which section of the building is struc-turally responding to the various loads

The folding skin of TVCC is its most defining gesture, creating a dynamic form that reaches into the sky. The exterior wrapping skin provides the lateral stability in the transverse direction. Its space frame creates a rigid connection that links the various buildings together into a single structure. It is made of zinc cladding that is ribbed, creating clean lines that follow the form of the skin. It changes in width relating to the separate buildings it encompasses. Those buildings also derive the angles and folds of the skin.

Footnotes

1 - http://english.cctv.com/2 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=123 - http://www.e-architect.co.uk/beijing/central_china_tv.htm4 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=125 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=16 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=17 - Mixing Up the Mega-Block, Global Charrette 2.0, Columbia GSAAP. New York City. 2008.8 - CCTV : Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. OMA. Tokyo. 2005.9 - http://hawtaction.com/2008/07/tall-building-cctv-and-tvcc-towers-in-media-park.html10 - http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=12 11 - http://www.arup.com/eastasia/feature.cfm?pageid=400012 - http://www.arup.com/eastasia/feature.cfm?pageid=4000

Bibliography

http://www.oma.eu/http://www.arup.com/http://www.e-architect.co.uk/http://www.designweek.co.uk/Home/Default.aspxhttp://www.eikongraphia.com/http://www.arcspace.com/ http://hawtaction.com/http://english.cctv.com/A+U Magazine, July 2005 special issueCCTV : Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. OMA. Tokyo.2005Mixing up the Mega-Block Global Charrette 2.0. Columbia University. New York. March 2008.