Cameras -and Blame Turn To Cctv As Its Burning Building Heralds The New Year

摘要

It is hard to imagine how architecture could get more post-modern than to become iconic for disappearing. So it might prove for Rem Koolhaas' Television Cultural Centre (TVCC) tower - the smaller of the two elements within China Central Television's (CCTV) ￡500 million project (AR July 2008) - which, having been ravaged by fire earlier this month, now stands on the cusp of a new world of potential symbolic meanings. For one, the fire falling on the night of China's Lantern Festival, the last event of new year celebrations, creates an inevitable bad omen and resonates with the juddering slowdown China is currently experiencing. Then, on the purely architectural level, it is hard to see flames tearing from the windows of a piece of prime starchitecture and not relate it to what is happening elsewhere.