The last week has seen a crop of reports about Beijing’s new architecture:
The Architectural Record has published a Beijing special called Record Reveals: Beijing.
It includes a labeled Google Earth map of Beijing, profiles of important Beijing-based architects and landmark new buildings (although only the usual suspects from the CCTV tower to the Bird’s Nest), an article by Michael Meyer, author of The Last Days of Old Beijing, as well as photos and many other articles.
The New York Times has also published a rather enthusiastic special report:
The Bird’s Nest; photo by TooManyTribbles
In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China
by Nicolas Ouroussoff
If Westerners feel dazed and confused upon exiting the plane at the new international airport terminal here, it’s understandable. It’s not just the grandeur of the space. It’s the inescapable feeling that you’re passing through a portal to another world, one whose fierce embrace of change has left Western nations in the dust.
See also Interactive map of Beijing new architecture.
And then there’s this awfully titled piece in Vanity Fair:
by Kurt Andersen
Just as many of New York City’s most iconic landmarks rose in breathtakingly brief succession a century ago, Beijing has been re-inventing itself since 2001 with a rush of showstopping buildings by internationally renowned architects: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron’s National Stadium, Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid complex, Rem Koolhaas’s China Central Television headquarters, and Norman Foster’s Terminal 3.
On the eve of a controversial Olympics, Kurt Andersen sees China’s true promise in a more enduring spectacle of daring commissions, bravura engineering, and creatively humanistic design.
Finally, the photos above are by TooManyTribbles: see her blog, or her Flickr page.