CCTV Headquarters
OMA

January 14, 2013 /

Beijing, China

Photo: Iwan Baan 

CCTV Headquarters, designed by OMA as a reinvention of the skyscraper as a loop, defies the skyscraper's typical quest for ultimate height.

The design combines the entire process of TV-making, formerly scattered in various locations across the city, into a loop of interconnected activities.

Photo: Iwan Baan

The building is visible from most of Beijing; it sometimes comes across as big and sometimes small, from some angles strong and from others soft.

Photo: Iwan Baan

Photo: Philippe Ruault

Photo: Iwan Baan

Photo © OMA

The forces at work within the structure are rendered visible on the facade: a web of triangulated steel tubes - diagrids - that, instead of forming a regular pattern of diamonds, become dense in areas of greater stress, looser and more open in areas requiring less support. The facade itself becomes a visual manifestation of the building's structure.

Photo © OMA

The self-supporting hybrid facade structure features high performance glass panels with a sun shading of 70 percent open ceramic frit, creating the soft silver-grey color that gives the building a surprisingly subtle presence in the Beijing skyline.

Image © OMA 
The Facade

Rising from a common platform the two towers lean towards each other and eventually merge in a perpendicular, 75-meter cantilever.

Photo © OMA

Drawing © OMA
The Loop

The innovative structure of the building is the result of long term collaboration between European and Chinese engineers to achieve new possibilities for the high-rise.

I am very happy, after years of intense collaboration, that the CCTV building will soon begin to perform its role in the way it is intended./ Rem Koolhaas

 Drawing courtesy OMA
 Site Plan