Digging new ideas
Weird concept for this five-star hotel built in an old quarry in the city of Songjiang near Shanghai. The resort, currently under construction, will include a 400-bed hotel, a conference room for more than a thousand people, restaurants and a multitude of sports and leisure facilities (swimming pool, climbing wall...). The Songjiang Hotel itself will rise by two floors above the 100-meter cliff, and plunge on two levels under water, with a view on a giant aquarium !
Urban Jungle
An answer to the overcrowding of Hong Kong ? This strange project entitled Urban Jungle from the architect Vincent Callebaut proposes to re-domesticate nature and expand the territory of this modern city. The aim is to increase the possibilities of building real estates with a strong ecological connotation. The new spaces will be self-sufficient and produce more energy than they consume!
Beijing big wheel
Beijing big wheel will be the largest wheel in the world with a height of 208 meters! This size was chosen to celebrate the 2008 Olympic Games. A huge attraction, which should be completed by 2009. It will be able to carry 1920 passengers at once, with 40 people in 48 different cabins! One turn of the well will take 30 minutes, time to see (or not see) the great wall lost in a veil of industrial mist…
No false note for this construction
This house shaped like a piano is located in the city of Huainan, Anhui Province. The main building looks like a black piano and the stairways similar to a transparent violin.
This extravagant building is used to display housing development in the new areas of the city of Huainan, an attempt to strike the right chord of the futur buyers.
MAD IN CHINA
This Chinese project wit weird organic forms is a project from a Beijing architect agencyMAD, Ma Yangsong 马岩松, making te link between architecture and our natural environment.
The Erdos Museum 尔多斯博物馆 in Inner Mongolia is now under construction in the middle of the Gobi desert. The strange shape of the building reminds the one of a heart, not only outside but also inside with the tangle of its « arteries »
Other MAD project with the Absolute towers of Toronto, already nicknamed by the inhabitants « Marilyn Monroe » due to its very feminin et sensual outlines.
Big shorts
In the heart of Beijing, this must be one of the most emblematic buildings of the architectural madness that seized China.
The CCTV Headquarters is a skyscraper in the Beijing Central Business District.
The main building is not a traditional tower, but a continuous loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 381,000 square metres (4.1 million square feet) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building's facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone. Because of its radical shape, it has acquired the nickname dà kùchǎ (大裤衩)[2], meaning "Big shorts".
The building was completed in December 2008. Rem koolhaas and Ole Schereen were the architects for the building. It stands at 234 metres (768 ft) tall and has 51 floors.
Infernal Tower
On February 9, 2009 an adjacent building in the complex, the Television Cultural Center, caught on fire, while people were celebrating the Lantern Festival. The fire was triggered by fireworks illegally launched from the roof of the tower under construction. A firefighter died and the future Mandarin hotel, a theater and a recording studio were destroyed.
Godzilla
Chinese netizens were quick to spread the information and to make fun of the situation - despite its tragic dimension. They turn the photos into horror films scenes. A way, of making fun of the state television CCTV last bastion of propaganda. Via China Smack.
Shanghai big dog tower
This unique 80 meters high tower should be raised in the Pudong area of Shanghai in 2010 if it is accepted by the local authorities. The projest has been selected for the 2010 Universal Exposition of Shanghai.
Shanghai World Financial Center
After more than ten years of delay, the tallest building in China is now cutting into the already hazy sky of Shanghai dotted with skyscrapers.
The bottle opener
The World Financial Center in Shanghai, a bottle opener tower-shaped building of 492 meters tall (101 stories), has cost nearly one billion dollars (722 million euros) to the tycoon Japanese buisness man Minoru Mori.
The tower will shelter conference rooms, a shopping center, hotel, restaurants and should eventually offer 70 floors of office designed to accommodate 12,000 people. An observatory is also planned at the top of the building.
The skyscrapers and stunning panoramic view of the megalopolis is destined to become a major tourist attraction and give back to Shanghai a major key role in international business.
Currently, a single tower in the world is higher than the World Financial Center: Taipei 101 Taiwan (508 meters high). A even higher skyscraper is under construction in Dubai: Burj Dubai that should be more than 900 meters high !
The Shanghai Center
Even higher !
This building of 127 floors, and 632 meters high, is rising between the World Financial Center and the Jinmao tower in Pudong.
