In exactly three weeks I will be in Beijing, northern capital, formerly Peking. Once a great imperial capital, now a great Olympic city and growing megalopolis which is home to 17 million. I intend to write a blog when I am in China but in the meantime I will be publishing a series of short pieces on various topics of interest to me. One of my main interests in China is architecture and urban planning. Apparently, it is also one of the Chinese's main interests.
Since opening up to the rest of the world in the late 1970's, China has witnessed an economic miracle, modernization, and also the eradication of much of its cultural heritage and replacement with western ideas and practices, especially in the fields of architecture. Of course, to be fair, this vitriolic rejection of historic or "feudal" practices began in earnest under the Communists and reached fever pitch during the horrors of the cultural revolution of the 1960's in which old temples, palaces, and cultural artifacts and practices were destroyed and banned.
But the architecture of contemporary China and the processes of urban development of the capitalist age are now taking full effect. Most of the architecture currently going up in China is being built to compete with western standards, and often times is designed by the most accomplished American and European architects. Rem Koolhaas's mammothly totalitarian CCTV tower in Beijing, Hertzog and De Meuron's iconic "Bird's Nest' olympic stadium, and Lord Norman Foster's sprawling Beijing International Airport terminal are some of the most noted recent projects to go up in Beijing. Of the three mentioned above, only the airport, which Foster allegedly designed with traditional Chinese colors red and yellow and feng shui in mind, makes any attempt to achieve even the slightest contextual continuity with traditional Chinese architecture. The bird's nest and the CCTV tower, while striking and revolutionary, lack any cultural context or explanation. The recent Chinese National Theater, like the stadium possesing an evocative nick name ("the egg"), seems to go even further, its curvilinear pod alighting like an alien ship in the direct heart of Beijing, next to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. It replaced several hutong neighborhoods as well. (above)
There are countless other examples of incongruous and ridiculous modern architecture and I don't presume to argue that all new buildings evoke the traditions of the past, or use traditional forms and symbols. Oftentimes the desire to reconcile modern function with historical form ends up with the faux kitsch of Disneyland or the brutal ugliness of Nazi architect Albert Speer's grand neoclassical promenades built for Hitler's troop parades. However, I find it particularly fascinating and even inspiring when architects manage to achieve a striking modern building while at the same time incorporating traditional forms and symbols as well. There are several examples of this in China, some achieving a harmonious synthesis while some fall more in the category of kitsch. Usually, in my opinion, the most successful and graceful modern buildings have been the pagoda skyscrapers. These towering structures, the two most iconic of which are Shanghai's Jin Mao tower and Tapei, Taiwan's Taipei 101 (top, and directly above respectively).
I like these two buildings because they seem to me to exemplify a harmonious balance between traditional vocabulary and modern construction technology. The pagoda form is rei-magined for the twentieth century, and the result is something new. Of course, there is only so much one can do with the pagoda form, but in reality most skyscrapers follow some kind of design that tapers as it rised. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and many others follow this pattern for obvious structural reasons. The egg, while striking, seems dramatically out of place in Beijing. The CCTV tower and Bird's Nest are certainly culturally out of place but since their location is outside the traditional city limits of Ming and Qing Dynasty Beijing, their idiosyncratic forms are less damaging to the Beijing cityscape and can be appreciated for their futuristic beauty in the context of the modern cityscape making up most of Beijing outside the second ring road (which replaced the old city walls in the 1950's).
While cultural preservation in design is often hard to reconcile with the needs of a modern society, the pagoda skyscraper is one way to achieve this. The pagoda skyscraper can also be seen in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia where the Petronas Towers (once the world's tallest buildings) evoked the stuppa form of Southeast Asian Buddhist architecture, and formed a striking backdrop for Sean Connery and Angelina Jolie to climb on in the movie Entrapment. Certainly traditional, even religious architectural forms can be versatile, functional, striking, and even sexy. In Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing Mao is probably rolling over in his cryogenically frozen maosoleum seeing that religion (the opium of the people) and capitalism have come together to produce something new.
Since opening up to the rest of the world in the late 1970's, China has witnessed an economic miracle, modernization, and also the eradication of much of its cultural heritage and replacement with western ideas and practices, especially in the fields of architecture. Of course, to be fair, this vitriolic rejection of historic or "feudal" practices began in earnest under the Communists and reached fever pitch during the horrors of the cultural revolution of the 1960's in which old temples, palaces, and cultural artifacts and practices were destroyed and banned.
But the architecture of contemporary China and the processes of urban development of the capitalist age are now taking full effect. Most of the architecture currently going up in China is being built to compete with western standards, and often times is designed by the most accomplished American and European architects. Rem Koolhaas's mammothly totalitarian CCTV tower in Beijing, Hertzog and De Meuron's iconic "Bird's Nest' olympic stadium, and Lord Norman Foster's sprawling Beijing International Airport terminal are some of the most noted recent projects to go up in Beijing. Of the three mentioned above, only the airport, which Foster allegedly designed with traditional Chinese colors red and yellow and feng shui in mind, makes any attempt to achieve even the slightest contextual continuity with traditional Chinese architecture. The bird's nest and the CCTV tower, while striking and revolutionary, lack any cultural context or explanation. The recent Chinese National Theater, like the stadium possesing an evocative nick name ("the egg"), seems to go even further, its curvilinear pod alighting like an alien ship in the direct heart of Beijing, next to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. It replaced several hutong neighborhoods as well. (above)
I like these two buildings because they seem to me to exemplify a harmonious balance between traditional vocabulary and modern construction technology. The pagoda form is rei-magined for the twentieth century, and the result is something new. Of course, there is only so much one can do with the pagoda form, but in reality most skyscrapers follow some kind of design that tapers as it rised. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and many others follow this pattern for obvious structural reasons. The egg, while striking, seems dramatically out of place in Beijing. The CCTV tower and Bird's Nest are certainly culturally out of place but since their location is outside the traditional city limits of Ming and Qing Dynasty Beijing, their idiosyncratic forms are less damaging to the Beijing cityscape and can be appreciated for their futuristic beauty in the context of the modern cityscape making up most of Beijing outside the second ring road (which replaced the old city walls in the 1950's).
While cultural preservation in design is often hard to reconcile with the needs of a modern society, the pagoda skyscraper is one way to achieve this. The pagoda skyscraper can also be seen in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia where the Petronas Towers (once the world's tallest buildings) evoked the stuppa form of Southeast Asian Buddhist architecture, and formed a striking backdrop for Sean Connery and Angelina Jolie to climb on in the movie Entrapment. Certainly traditional, even religious architectural forms can be versatile, functional, striking, and even sexy. In Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing Mao is probably rolling over in his cryogenically frozen maosoleum seeing that religion (the opium of the people) and capitalism have come together to produce something new.
