CCTV Headquarters

China’s state television company was given a high-rise that is not a tower but a loop. Two leaning towers meet at the top in an angle that cantilevers 75 metres into the air. The pattern of diagonals on the façade shows how forces move through the structure.

China Central Television needed a new headquarters in Beijing’s new business district ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. OMA, Rem Koolhaas’s office, won the competition in 2002 with a design by Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. Construction began in 2004 and was completed in 2012, after a fire in a neighbouring building in 2009 had delayed the work. The engineering firm Arup calculated the structure.

The building consists of two leaning towers standing on a common base and joined at the top by a section that cantilevers 75 metres. Together they form a loop. The façade has a grid of diagonals that is denser where the forces are greater and sparser where they are smaller. The loop is meant to bring together all parts of television production, from news to broadcasting, in a continuous chain.

The building soon acquired nicknames in China, and it has been both admired and criticised as a symbolic project for state media power. In engineering terms it is regarded as one of the most complex high-rise structures. CCTV shows how Koolhaas has tried to rethink the high-rise as a type.

• Contemporary architecture
• Rem Koolhaas