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BEIJING BOOM TOWER 精品生活梦工厂精品生活梦工厂

Can architecture,at least in theory,respond to thedemands ofsociety? TheBeijing BoomTower is anexploration indensity aimed tocurb urbansprawl. Thebuilding offers itsresidents twicethe average floor space of a suburban home in LosAngeles at ten times Manhattan density; anantidote against severe gateification itaccommodates all strata of Chinese society in asingle megablock of vast services and facilities butwithout walls between them.

2005装置作品北京精品生活梦工厂展现了首都北京装置作品北京精品生活梦工厂展现了首都北京

在在2020年的一个年的一个6公顷大的城市模型。社区设计强化公顷大的城市模型。社区设计强化

了当代大都市的不同想法的冲突：为城市空间的需了当代大都市的不同想法的冲突：为城市空间的需

求而不断扩张城市面积以及其导致的未来负担。北求而不断扩张城市面积以及其导致的未来负担。北

京精品生活梦工厂展现了一个包含交通、桥梁、电京精品生活梦工厂展现了一个包含交通、桥梁、电

梯、高速公路以及高层建筑的超级建筑模式，用空梯、高速公路以及高层建筑的超级建筑模式，用空

中邻居的概念作为一种持续的系统来连接被分割的中邻居的概念作为一种持续的系统来连接被分割的

中国社会。这个模型是一个由三部分组成的整体影中国社会。这个模型是一个由三部分组成的整体影

象装置的中心部分。第一个投射在模型墙面上的图象装置的中心部分。第一个投射在模型墙面上的图

文信息使这个摩天大楼变成了一个巨大的柱形图。文信息使这个摩天大楼变成了一个巨大的柱形图。

它高度概括了中国住宅区的政治经济分布。第二部它高度概括了中国住宅区的政治经济分布。第二部

分通过闭路电视捕捉建筑内部的景象编织出抽象的分通过闭路电视捕捉建筑内部的景象编织出抽象的

内部空间，这些影象被反馈到黑白荧屏上。第三部内部空间，这些影象被反馈到黑白荧屏上。第三部

分则是对居住和工作在分则是对居住和工作在BBT的人们进行的采访。并且的人们进行的采访。并且

结合了一段详细的动画来展示这个项目的发展和创结合了一段详细的动画来展示这个项目的发展和创

建。建。10倍于曼哈顿的真实生活逐渐清晰了。倍于曼哈顿的真实生活逐渐清晰了。

.

THE

bbt beijing boomexibition guangzhouinterview bbt exhibitiontower

Mengyu Zhan / 67.4 months ago / 28 fileshand sketches all hand skeches aboutbbt

neville mars / 67.5 months ago / 9 filesBBT BOX sequence BBT, Beijing,model, sequence

neville mars / 67.5 months ago / 1 fileBBT-BOX-open BBT-BOX-open

neville mars / 68.8 months ago / 1 fileBBT - crystal CG bbt crystal

neville mars / 70.8 months ago / 1 filenewpics5 newpics5

Owned by neville mars /Added by Stephanie Yao/ 75.6 months ago /149346 hits / 29 hoursview time

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Beijing Boom Tower

THEORETICAL PRODUCT OF THE MARKET RESPONDING TO ALL FUTURE DEMANDS: SUBURBANSTYLE LIVING IN THE HEART OF CHINA’S CAPITAL.Architects: Neville Mars, Saskia Vendel; interviewsAdrian Hornsby, Charlie KoolhaasCurators: Guangzhou Triennial: Hou Hanru, MillenniumArt Museum Beijing: Zhang GaProject PDF: BBT- news briefvideo link: BBTV animationMovie link: BBTV - exterior projectionsOr small on Youtube: BBTV and BBTV - infojections.

Conceptual outline...“We’ll see a forest of chimneys from here”- MaoZedong, Beijing 1949

Fifty years ago the Chinese city was set to become anorderly grid of danwei: small worker units packedaround the bases of glorious factories, extending onpast the edges of the horizon. The low evenpopulation dispersion which would eradicate thepotential for corrupting bourgeois downtowns, andthe skyline would be dominated by monoliths ofindustry, rather than malls, offices, or exclusiveresidential blocks. Half a century on this concept ofcommunist planning is wholly outdated, and nowheremore so than in Beijing. Rows upon rows of glitteringapartments demarcate the envy-skyline of a vastmetropolis. The housing boom has become thedriving force of the nation’s optimism - its glasstowers are the new chimneys, mass-producingmodern urban lifestyles. However as the new China istaking shape, the drawbacks of modernity arebecoming apparent. The sudden transformation ofthe city proves to be dense, congested, andultimately unrewarding. The products of excessivemotorization and fortification are urban gridlock andsocial lockdown. Housing blocks and villa parks withtheir gates and cameras incrementally fence-off thepublic realm. Buildings and infrastructure haveexploded well beyond the human scale. Big block

neville mars / 70.8 months ago / 5 filesnewpics4 newpics4

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architecture has taken over urban planning. What arethe cornerstones of this new urbanism? Sprawl,exclusion, and copy ‘n’ paste architectural remedies.This is the reality of the building boom at hyper-speed for half a billion new urbanites. BBT isarchitecture’s final attempt to tame the city.

Interview with architect NevilleMarsAH: Why did you develop a new residential block? AcrossBeijing we find huge bright billboards advertising thearrival of large modern housing in vast green settings.They look comfy.NM: The current projects express an approach which is,essentially, anti-urban. They are conceived andmarketed as pieces of “garden-city”: fully metropolitanvilla retreats, high-rise towers hidden in parkland. Youonly have to look at the names of some of them -Fragrance Park, Natural City, Somerset Fortune Garden.Incontrovertibly urban zones are being repackaged asmoments of rural serenity. The very notion is at odds

with itself, and completely incompatible with the realityof increasing urban pressure, and the rapidly expandingChinese cityscape.

AH: Incompatible - in what sense? NM: There are a number of problems being generated.First of all the contemporary Chinese block has become afenced-off enclave - girt by walls and accessed onlythrough guarded gates. It operates as an isolated plotcarved out of the city. As developments like these step-repeat their way around the ring roads, we see theincremental privatization of the surface area of Beijing.Whole blocks of public streets just disappear. Add to thisthe scale of the blocks, and consequently that of theirinfrastructure, and you get ribbons of fortifiedcompounds opening onto six lane arterial highways. Thecityscape is broken up into segregated units, and thesize of those units has exploded beyond the scope oflocal planning. A kind of inhuman coarseness emerges inthe urban texture - not only on the physical level, butalso on the societal. The economic thrust of these unitsis towards pure crude geographical stratification. Thevolume of land they take up is wholly disproportionate totheir window of accessibility, and so creates map-bandsof income homogeneity. The gates function on manylevels. In addition to this phenomenon of lockdown, theflash-motorization which accompanies such car-dependent typologies presents cities like Beijing with thescenario of total gridlock. Even the Photoshopped green-space of the billboards is more circulation area thancommunity space of any real destination quality. Forpeople living in outdated Chinese homes, and confronteddaily with the problems of a congested polluted city,these images are highly persuasive. But what they offeris a false concept.

AH: And so whatis BBT?NM: The logicalconclusion ofthe currentchannels ofdesire. BBT isthe theoreticalproduct of agenuine marketattempt tosupply accordingto demand:suburban

luxuries in the centreof a major city. InBBT you can haveyour cake and eat it.The 12,500inhabitants areaccommodated inapartments onaverage 200% largerthan common homestoday, most of themwith big balconies,and all supported bya full retail and facilities system. There’s drive-inparking, 2 subway stations, and 8 public squares.Moreover we have built BBT on half the available land.The Spare Space concept sucks up off cuts usuallysituated around towers and amalgamates them to makeat one end a real park, and at the other a building socompact, it puts the subway within walking distance ofall the inhabitants. Thus the current trend in China ofincreasing individualism and space demand is met, as isthe need to achieve sufficient density to support anadvanced mass-transit system. The design aims totackle sprawl, and indicate the kinds of sacrifices whichneed to be made to ensure future living standardscomply with our goals for a compact integrated urbanenvironment.

AH: Whatsacrifices and howintegrated? Is BBTnot only for thewealthy? NM: No. Unlike thebillboard projects ithas no boundingwalls. We think ofBBT not as abuilding but as agenuine verticalneighborhood.Everyone can

obtain a home here,but the sacrifice theymake is life in a verycondensedenvironment. Thestructureincorporates a

number of inherentgradients whichnecessarily relate tocomfort and to unit-cost. Among theupper levels networks

of interconnecting bridges allow communication betweenbright and airy penthouse suites. But as you descendlower down the towers, increasingly you are forced torelinquish your access to natural light and privacy. Thereare 60 floors to drop through, and it is at the lowerlevels that you find the cheaper apartments. This isreinforced too by the infrastructural scheme, wherethree decks service three different economic clusters.Pedestrians and cyclists pass underneath among marketsand foodstalls. On the second level are the subwaystations, and links to the main retail centre and atriumbuildings. Car owners enter from the highway direct tothe third level, composed of open decks and expresselevators to luxury apartments. This separation of flowsbased on mode of transport is a subtle yet effective wayto enforce a degree of locale discrimination, by whichdifferent consumers are naturally guided to their mostappropriate retail environment. It works for shoppersand shopkeepers alike. Throughout the block publicspace is reinvented as a continuously flowing semi-commercialized fully conditioned public podium.

AH: 5,000apartmentson 6hectares ofland at tentimesManhattandensity.12,500peopleimplicitly

compartmentalized according to the car they drive - ordon’t have to drive - and the fraction of the day they get

to see. That sounds as close to dystopia as utopia, asmuch nightmare as dream.NM: And maybe it is. The project aims to reveal whatthe modern desires necessitate, and how radical theconsequent measures need to be. It should be apparentthat the desires themselves are as sordid and inhumaneas their natural product. Beijing cannot withstandanother 15 years of uncontrolled expansion. Copy-pastearchitecture cannot even begin to comprehend the scaleof the urban problem. We want to underline thenecessity to research and respond to an inevitably all-encompassing urban realm.AH: And so as a designstatement BBT aims to provoke these visions of futurescenarios?NM: The goal is to stop people from ignoringor hiding from the urban condition, and to annihilate theanti-urbanist approaches in circulation at the moment.Instead we need to use all the urban means possible.Only by acknowledging the urban pressure can youpossibly respond to it.

AH: And if that response turns out to be BBT?

NM: Our next step is to reengineer the city

Undisclosed aspects of the BBTCharlie Koolhaas emails with Neville Mars

NM: Dear Charlie, this written interview sounds like anice idea, but not this long list of questions. Can wehave some foreplay?

CK: Darling, I will do this interview personally as i havebeen slightly more intimate with your work then Remrecently, i don’t usually bother with foreplay but I’ll giveit a go just to keep you happy (i read in Cosmo thatthat’s my job as a woman, and god knowns i needemployment) so with the last question we sent you,maybe you thought it was premature but i don’t believein beating around the bush, i wanted to know about whatit means to you to be an European architect in China.Particularly as architecture, as seen in the Chinesemedia specially, is so the domain of the old white maleintellectual in a turtle neck. I think that your BBTV filmwas about this, you played up the monotonous creepyside of this persona...why did you do that, what wasyour message to the Chinese (maybe this is a broaderquestion relating to the project as a whole) was it thatthey should mistrust the unemotional rationalism ofEuropean ‘planners’ who will lead them down the road ofa depersonalised and totally predictable life? and is this aEuropean life? or are Europeans restricting life here thatthey would/could not in the west?

Okay maybe we can get to this later on in ourinterviews, lets go back to explaining the stereotypes; -please describe the person presented as the‘Mastermind’ of the boom tower project? -Why is theBBT project a European project? -if the architect in yourfilm had been Chinese how would he look like? -in whatways would the project have been different; would theChinese architect have had the same intension but haveinadvertently added some unexpected surprises thatwould make living there slightly richer?

I want to get straight on to this subject because i hopethis starting point could really lead us in someinteresting directions. Also the persona that you portrayis very much the persona that my dad has to fightagainst, when Chinese people criticize his involvementin China and the CCTV building, so i am very interestedin why you would potentially make working here moredifficult for yourself, or are you offering yourself as ahappy alternative to this?

If you like ask me some questions too, so we have a twoway; like all good foreplay should be.

love, C

NM: Theman in theSci-Fi officeis themastermindof theBeijingBoomTower. Mostpeople findhim creepybecause heis

omnipresent. He has designed a building so crafty it iseffectively controlling your life.

But don’t be fooled, for architects and planners he andall he represents is a fetish. He tickles our senses. Theyidea to design something perfect and total, no questionsasked, turns architects on. What’s truly scary about himis his conviction. He believes in architecture as asolution for society. And in order to realize such animmense and intricate structure he needs to believe inthis and in himself. He needs to be a megalomaniac. Buthis lack of self-criticism has undermined his projects andhis ideas. A new understanding of the market led him tobelieve he could accommodate all of society in a singlebuilding by offering enough variety. The 29 towersprotrude from a podium crammed with an array offacilities shops and entertainment; an endlessly refinedgradient of social classes and wealth as the new equality

for the ever more segregated Chinese society. Not abuilding, but in fact a city inside the city, designed as aChinese-Western hybrid. Let’s say Market Modernism.

I mustadmit thispresents avery atemptingmodel, andone thatwould godown well inChina. Local architects have asked me where BBT wouldbe build without blinking their eyes. In reality the superstructure above the podium, the towers of the buildingaren’t much denser than common residential blocks inChina. And they are surely more spacious inside. Thereal problem that occurs in the BBT is that people don’tseem to have a choice. Or rather they are presentedwith endless choices and seem to be compelled topartake in their consumption. China as you know is allabout status. Getting rich is still glorious. The BBToffers plenty of opportunities to move up if you do getrich. But all progress has to take place within thestructures of building. Like the Chinese society there isno opportunity for real change. The city as a whole -Beijing in particular - grows, changes and adaptsconstantly. In China demolition is of no great concern. Itallows for China and its cities to evolve at lightingspeed. But build as a complete and ideal entity the bigBBT can only be realized and demolished in its entirety.It either works or it doesn’t. The process of trial anderror a region like the Pearl River Delta is famous for isnegated. Western (as you call it European) architectureis bluntly super-imposed on fertile Chinese cityscape.

Mr. Mastermind is from old Europe. He represents theideals of Modernism, modern architecture even.Architecture has become the trophy wife of the Chineseeconomy. He can’t be Chinese as China until recentlysimply didn’t have its own modern architecture –universities for one still only produce draftsmen insteadof designers. The Howard Roark’s of China are emergingbut in real-estate development. This is where the moneyis, and certainly where the innovation is. The BBT too,feeds on this very Chinese skill. We have meticulouslymaximized light, living and retail. In that sense it’s veryChinese; architecture on a calculator. With China’surban population bursting we felt it was important to

explore the feasibility of an entirely artificial landscape.If the architect would have been Chinese the BBT wouldhave looked exactly the same, only with square-shapedtowers.

I was really interested in this Chinese method of makingpublic space private, and also the innocence behind this,in England privacy always implies something slightlysubversive, do you think there is a subversive side tothis in China. What are they trying to get away from?Are there things that the Chinese need privacy for thatEuropeans don’t and vice versa?

The architect ofcommunist Chinapainstakinglyeradicated all senseof privacy. Anythingpersonal, a home, athought, a secret,was subversive; notbeing fully devotedto the collective inbody and spirit wascounter-revolutionary and a

serious offence. Husbands and wives lived separated,slept in dormitories, ate in large communal dining halls.Right from the start there was a harsh dichotomybetween the Party and its People. Even today yourconnections to the Party are crucial for your success inbusiness. China is still a system inside a system. Thearmy of black Audi’s swerves around especially inbureaucratic Beijing. The room next door in therestaurant bellows with the noise of rich drunkenmiddleman. But at least China is using its propulsiontowards prosperity to reinvent itself. As money seepsdown to other social strata a new society is forming.China is shedding its communal past and embracesindividualism in favour of more subtle forms of privacyand collectivity. (Private rooms are the success formulain bars clubs and restaurants. The privacy offered isparticularly rewarding after a brief encounter with thecrowd as you pass through the dining hall or club lobby.You leave behind the people waiting outside, on thedance floor, at the private tables and in the redupholstered cubicles. A long winding corridor units youwith your friends in a suite that’s looks like a miniversion of the entire club, with your own bar, dancers

and KTV.)

Theregimentedsociety ofthecommunistera hasnaturallyprogressedto form a

sophisticated gradient of privacies and increasingopulence. Only the housing sector still depends on a verycrude form of segregation. The different residentialcompounds, like the rooms in the club, represent well-defined niche markets. But bluntly fenced-off from thestreet and disconnected from each other they lack anyreal communal space. No dance floor, no winding alley toyour home. The streets of Beijing, once a vibrant publicrealm offer no solace; converted to highways they areoccupied only by the black cars with tinted windows andthe odd trash cart. All the fun is inside.

The buildings have grown bigger to absorb the streetlife, but not quite big enough to accommodate everyone.Through sheer size we hoped to address these problemsin the Beijing Boom Tower. A building fit for all. A cityinside the city, with public squares parks and retailgrouped around the different target groups and lifestylesthat have emerged. But unlike the Chinese gatedcommunity all the areas in the complex are connected.Every square is accessible; spun together in a giant loopof continuous communal space.

Admittedlypassage tothe upper-decks isdifficultwhen youhave tostart at thebottom. Thenew socialclasses thatwill havematured by2020 arebestconsidered

by theirmode of transport. At street level the migrants enter onfoot or by bike, just above the young middle-class in theshining new trains of the light-rail and at the parkinglevel gliding over the third ring road junction the car-owners penetrate the building on the 7th floor. Theresult is a smooth three-dimensional gradient of luxuryand distinction; a system of private rooms, but withendless corridors for interaction and curving squares likeoutdoor dance floors for social engagement.

Safety is the common argument for China’s fetish forwalls. But they present a misleading sense of security.The modern compounds of today will force you throughan archaic sequence of checkpoints with sleepy guards. Astatus symbol at best, it is all that is needed in a countrywere small crime, or rather stealing from the richrequires a mammoth amount of courage. The BoomTower has no segregating walls; a comprehensive CCTVsystem covers the entire public domain of the building.The CCTV movie (as in closed circuit television) we havemade shows you every corner of the building. Every stepyou take is captured from every angle. The movie of youlife inside however is not just stared at by lax guards orshady police. All the homes in the BBT can zap to anycamera in the building, move it around and zoom in. Instead of watching CCTV-news or Channel 9, you can takea virtual stroll along the parks and shops, making sure allis fine. This is the future of Chinese social control. Theheart-warming but suffocating social environment of theHutongs and courtyards is reengineered and replacedwith an elaborate network of anonymous individualwatching out for you.

CK: Thepodiumlooksamazing. Ifit is trueyou canfreely findyour wayfrom thestreet al theway to theupper decksthen what’sthis passagelike? It seemsthe three

hollow towersare at thecenter ofthree distinctclusters connected with bridges, why?

NM: The large pedestals supporting the towers interlockto create arching crevices that open up to the street. Inthe centre it forms a dome-shaped space as a flip-reversed of the podium; an urban grotto that contains allthe polluting facilities and cheap thrills a large city needsto survive, from garages to red-light districts, wholesaleand mass-entertainment. Their balconies and ceiling arered-blue from the neon logos. Some small triangles oflight seep through punctures in the parking deck above.Two levels thick the car parking slices the entirestructure in half separating this underworld from the topof the building; dark from light, the fortunate from therest.

But one can climb further and pass through the parkingdeck. Big box stores in the base of each atrium towerpunch right through the podium. For the middle-classcoming by train this ordeal is greatly reduced. Coming becar instant elevator access is granted to the entirepodium and to all the towers. The apartment towers areconnected with bridges to form three distinct clusterseach with a hollow tower at its center. These clusterspresent another social gradient by creating differentneighborhoods, served by different levels of facilitiesbeneath them in the podium. The hollow towers containsadditional vertical infrastructure. So heart of eachneighborhood is really an enormous atrium. The biggesttower can be seen as sixty storey social housing slab thathas been bent to form a hollow tube of elevators andcircular hallways.All this additional vertical infrastructure and all thebridges work together to offer the upper level homeswith the ultimate form of luxury possible in anapartment building; a private elevator. The preciouscore space in the slim tapered skyscrapers is used forexpress elevators to the penthouses. The reach lowerlevel homes you will have to pass through the bundle ofelevators in the atrium tower and across the skywalkthat connects to your house.

This is the context that prompts real ambition. In theBoom Tower moving up in the world, can be as simple asbuying a bigger home; a skyscraping bungalow, a duplexwith sun-terrace, or the double-suite-double-parking-combo. BBT is high-rise heaven! You can enter at theground floor and not look back till you’ve reached thetop. It is the ultimate life style engine that provides thethrust behind China’s liberated consumer economy; a

clockwork of soaring commercial forces built on acommunal foundation.

exhibitionsShowcase of BBT exhibitions:Dashanzi International Art Festival May 2005, DCFStudio, 798 District Beijing. In the line of Flight July 2005, Millennium Art Museum,Beijing. curator Zhang GaThe Second Guangzhou Triennial November 2005 -

January 2006, Guangdong Museum of Art. curator HouHanru

Installation descriptionThe 2005 installation Beijing Boom Tower (BBT) presentsa model showing 6 hectares of the Chinese capital in2020. The design of the block underlines the conflictingdesires of the modern metropolis: its boom demand forurban space, and its consequent suffocation. BBTpresents an extreme architecture of networks, bridges,escalators, highways and towers; a continuous systemthat reunites the segregated Chinese society within onevertical neighborhood. Its model is the central part of anintegrated video-installation with three projections. Thefirst shoots graphic information against the facade ofthe tower block, turning its skyscrapers into giant bardiagrams. It highlights the political and economicdimension of the Chinese residential block. The second

projection shows the closed circuit TV’s of the building.Mini-cameras capture the inner-world of the structure asthey weave through the abstract spaces. These imagesfeed back to a wall of black and white monitors.Interviews with the people that live and work in BBT areprojected in a third screen. These are combined with ananimation detailing the phases of its development andconstruction; the reality of life at ten times Manhattandensity becomes apparent.

The BBT underconstruction at the DCFStudio - Dashanzi 798,Beijing

First image on page courtesy of Crystal CG.

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