bib bim bjork

Björk

Volta

After the experimentation of her last record, Medulla, it’s hard not to take Björk’s promise of a collaborative “dance” record with a grain of Icelandic sea salt. Yes, she did call in hip-hop guru Timbaland and her old producer Mark Bell (he of the techno blips of Debut and Homogenic). But the un-pretty results here – Earth Intruders, Declare Independence – shake the booty less than the senses, and end up paling in comparison to the sleepy contributions of Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons, Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, a 10-piece orchestra, and pipa player Min Xiao-Fen. Forget moving bodies: it’s alongside the pipa on I See Who You Are that Björk’s ever-volatile voice moves most. Alex Pasternack

China, Blade Runner Style

This is an excerpt from a spread that ran in March in tbjhome.

THE BEIJING OLYMPICS by Alex Pasternack
leaving more than a sporting legacy
Somewhere behind the Olympics hype, behind the mascot dolls and the banners, China has embarked on its most ambitious construction project since the Great Wall. While sports buildings, and Olympic construction in general, may tend toward the triumphal, smart design has never been particularly associated with sporting events. But with green thinking and radical engineering and materials, this trio of Beijing Olympic buildings is blazing a new path.

Digital Beijing
The communications center for the Games styles itself after a computer motherboard – a design that looks better than it sounds. Water streams down a set of irregular, vertical LED panels, which are carved into the side of the building's shoebox-like envelope, a mix of concrete, aluminum and glass. On the ground floor, architect Zhu Pei (along with the Shenzhen firm Urbanus) borrows the translucent Plexiglas material that covers his Blur Hotel (see Travels in Style, p44) to construct a "digital carpet" – a translucent floor capable of displaying projected images. The building's end facades also rely on a new material: unlike costly stone, which was originally planned, the architects chose a lightweight aluminum that resembles stone at a fraction of the cost of the real thing.
Architect: Studio Pei Zhu/Urbanus
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

Water Cube
Like the nearby National Stadium, the National Aquatics Center draws inspiration from nature, but on a microscopic scale. The "Water Cube," as it's become known, is clad with 3,000 air pockets made of a recyclable Teflon-like plastic in a pattern evocative of one of nature's most common shapes: the arrangement of organic cells, or the natural formation of soap bubbles.
Such a design not only mimics nature's most efficient way of filling three-dimensional space, it also makes for efficient construction: "We realized that a structure based on this unique geometry would be highly repetitive and buildable whilst appearing very organic and random," says engineer Tristram Carfrae, whose firm Arup assisted Australian architects PTW and the CSCEC in their design. Ingeniously, the matrix of thin steel pipes that crisscross between the bubbles will also keep it standing through an earthquake, without the help of concrete or structural beams. And the translucent envelope lets in more light and heat than glass, helping to warm the building's five pools and slashing energy costs by 30 percent. It's not just the greenest of the Olympic designs, but it's also the most widely acclaimed. In one survey, Chinese citizens found it to be the country's most popular new design.
Architect: PTW/China State Construction Engineering
Corporation (CSCEC)
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

National Stadium
Though its exterior steel lattice structure is meant to resemble the twigs of a bird's nest, the 42,000 tons of steel that bend around and even support the futuristic National Stadium, designed by Swiss architects (and recent recipients of the UK's Royal Gold Medal) Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, evoke more a Martian mothership than a sports arena. While government officials were initially keen on a groundbreaking design being broadcast around the world, concerns about safety and cost (the original price tag was RMB 3.8 billion) seemed to endanger the project early on. But with the clock ticking, the government gave the green light – on the condition that a costly retractable roof be removed.
While the building's open shell fosters natural air circulation, it also covers gaps in the lattice with a translucent membrane like that used on the Aquatics Center (above); even if it rains on the opening ceremony, the shell will protect the stadium's 91,000 spectators, and in futuristic style. What happens to the stadium after the Olympics flies the coop, a concern for any Games host, will be up to Beijing's imagination.
Architect: Herzog and de Meuron
Cost: RMB3.1 billion
Completion date: late 2007

CCTV Headquarters
Much ink has been spilled over the China Central Television headquarters, but words still seem as weak as knees before this acrobatic wonder. The building's two 40-story, 60-degree-leaning towers connect by a cantilevered bridge that has inspired as much dismissive disbelief as speechless awe from designers worldwide. According to the project's German co-architect, Ole Scheeren, "It's one of the most complex buildings ever built." Along with Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect and founder of OMA, Scheeren created and has been managing the project in Beijing with a team of OMA designers dozens strong. While engineering firm Arup provided the unique engineering feats to make it work in an earthquake zone ("It's the most analyzed building we've done. Actually, it's probably the most analyzed building, period," says Arup's Rory McGowan), it is the army of ten thousand construction workers who really testify to the scale and complexity of this remarkable building, which may be the Chinese government's best answer to the pyramids of Egypt.
Architect: Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Cost: RMB5.8 billion
Completion date: 2009

AROUND CHINA by Alex Pasternack
China’s future?
With all eyes on China, the projects underway across the country are all trying to out-do each other – whether they be the tallest, the greenest, the slickest, and now even the deepest – both Beijing and Shanghai are fighting it out for the most jaw-dropping designs.

Songjiang Quarry Hotel, Shanghai

How to position a modern structure within an idyllic natural setting is a special challenge in China, where tradition often demands that architecture accommodate nature. Though that tradition is often broken, the Songjiang Quarry Hotel near Shanghai goes for the opposite extreme: it hugs the side of a 100-meter deep quarry, standing two levels above the rock face and plunging two levels below the lake's bottom. Down there, guests can enjoy an underwater dinner or check into rooms that face a ten-meter-deep aquarium. The bottom levels also provide access to water-based and extreme sports like rock climbing and even (thanks to a planned cantilever above the quarry) bungee jumping.
The building itself looks like it's taking a plunge off the cliff side. "We drew our inspiration from the quarry setting itself, adopting the image of a green hill cascading down the natural rock face as a series of terraced, landscaped hanging gardens," says Martin Jochman, who led the design team from UK firm Atkins. A transparent glass "waterfall," in imitation of the existing one, is planned for the center of the building – a central vertical atrium connecting the base of the quarry with the roof of the hotel. To top it all off, the designers incorporated green roofing and geothermal energy extraction, meaning the hotel should not only slide into its setting, but have a minimal impact on it as well.
Architect: PTW/China State Construction Engineering
Corporation (CSCEC)
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

National Grand Theater, Beijing

Hot potato – or rather, egg; it is not so much the ambition of its complex design, but the surrounding controversy that's delayed the completion of this building for three years. French architect Paul Andreu's much-ballyhooed egg-shaped opera house is more fitting for a science-fiction movie than its Tiananmen digs, say local critics. As such, the building has become a lightning rod for scorn towards foreign architecture across China. Aside from concerns about how the glass dome and the large moat that surrounds it will stand up to the grit of Beijing's environment, the building has been questioned not just for its friendliness to the environment, but for its questionable feng shui: the building's entrance, through a glass tunnel beneath the moat, is more evocative of a traditional tomb than an opera house. The 2004 collapse of an Andreu-designed extension to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, which killed two Chinese citizens, didn't help the building's cause.
Still, its eye-catching design, approved shortly after China won its bid for the Olympics, represents a radical turn by Chinese leadership away from the stale, utilitarian architecture of the nearby Great Hall of the People. And the theater itself, which at night will be visible from the outside of the translucent dome, signals a fresh and international approach to performance space in a city that desperately needs it. Acoustic tests are scheduled for this summer, but officials still aren't naming a date for the opening performance.
Architect: Paul Andreu
Cost: RMB2.69 billion
Completion date: 2008

Shanghai World Financial Center
If the planners of the Shanghai World Financial Center (WFC) have their way, the title of world's tallest skyscraper will soon belong to China, at least for a moment. Even if the WFC, designed by KPF's Bill Pedersen, is soon eclipsed by other towers (such as Sir Norman Foster's planned Russia Tower in Moscow), when completed in 2008 the 101-story tower will still stand out amidst the forest of skyscrapers rising in Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district in Pudong, which is arguably the planet's tallest neighborhood.
A pair of "cosmic arcs" rises up the building's narrow, prismatic face, accentuating its height. At its apex, a distinctive and elegant six-story trapezoidal "sky portal" (which has earned the building the nickname "the giant bottle opener" from locals) is not just a nod to feng shui but a clever way to relieve the pressure from high winds. Visitors can gaze out through the haze from the observation deck located at the summit, or from an observation platform at the bottom of the sky portal, said to be the world's highest open-air gathering space. In addition to its business appointments, the tower will also include high-end shops and restaurants and a Park Hyatt, which will be (last superlative, promise) the world's highest luxury hotel.
Architect: KPF
Cost: RMB850 million
Completion date: Early 2008

PEARL RIVER NEW TOWER, GUANGZHOU by Alex Pasternack
Guangzhou goes green
You might not expect the headquarters of one of China's biggest cigarette manufacturers to be especially environmentally friendly. But Guangdong Tobacco Company's new digs, the Pearl River Tower designed by New York's SOM, takes sustainability to new heights. It aims to be the world's first zero-energy super-tall building. Getting there requires not just green add-ons like solar power but a thorough going-green design from top to bottom.
Taking advantage of its prime location along the Pearl River (not far from Zaha Hadid's opera house), the tower relies on three energy sources there for the taking – sun, water and even wind. The smooth, double-walled facade incorporates photovoltaics to gather solar energy, and is covered by fully glazed low-E (emittance) glass and integrated shades, insulating the interior from unwanted heat and glare.
The building's curtain wall also collects condensate for water use and air to assist a sophisticated heating and cooling system that uses 40 percent of the energy of traditional approaches. Outside, the building's curves push wind to openings positioned at the tower's mechanical levels, both relieving strenuous wind pressure and, brilliantly, funneling wind to turbines that will generate much of the tower's power. Also included is a water recycling system and a fuel cell system underneath, which forgoes grid electricity for more efficiently produced natural gas.
Altogether, the architects say, the 71-story Pearl River Tower has the potential to generate as much energy as it uses. And it's likely to generate new ideas for sustainable tall building designs too. It's at the forefront of the development of the Pearl River New Town, challenging the Twin Towers and the GZTV Tower not just for recognition, but to be the symbol of new Guangzhou. It may not have the sheer height of its challengers, but in an age of climate responsibility, it may gain more international respect.
Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Cost: not available
Completion date: 2009

GUANGZHOU OPERA HOUSE by Alex Pasternack
space opera
If Paul Andreu's bulbous Beijing opera house evokes the UFOs of a fifties' fantasy, Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou concert hall comes from a galaxy much farther away. The halls' stealth-like shapes, meant to replicate river pebbles, blur the line between the freaky, surreal computer-generated world where many of Hadid's adventurous designs tend to remain and the very real banks of the Pearl River.
It's one of China's most daring new designs, and a coup for Guangzhou. Aside from its 1,800-seat theater and 400-seat multi-purpose hall, the opera house engages with visitors from the nearby Haixinsha Tourist Park and Zhujiang New Town via its large promenade, cafes and shops. While the Pritzker-winning, Iraq-born architect's design may be at odds with traditional Chinese opera, or any opera for that matter, it's poised to hit the right notes.
Architect: Zaha Hadid
Cost: RMB1 billion
Completion date:
late 2007

VANKE CENTER, SHENZHEN by Alex Pasternack
crouching building, flying dragon
Steven Holl and Li Hu's adventurous commercial-residential complex is a perfect compliment to their Beijing Linked Hybrid. Where that development envisions a system of bridged residential towers connected like a dance circle, their Shenzhen project, commissioned by and for real estate developer Vanke, floats above the ground like a flying dragon.
By turning tall into long and lifting the snaking, aluminum-encased building on pillars, the design accommodates height regulations while providing for better interior views of a nearby lake – and shading an expanse of public and green space below. "We like to fuse the social with our approach to buildings," says Beijing-based Li Hu. He believes that keeping many functions within a single complex (in this case, commercial shops, a hotel and Soho) not only enriches buildings' social commitment, but can help to tighten the fabric of sprawling Chinese cities, which are clogged on the ground and in the air by construction and traffic. The building also wears green on its sleeve, with a green roof, sun-protected facade, water recycling, and a set of geothermal wells to provide heating and cooling.
Architect: Steven Holl
Cost: not available
Completion date:
late 2008

Riding the Rails

A sneak peek at the new Line 5 subway

Somehow, it wasn’t ironic that the Olympic Committee had to drive us to Beijing’s newest subway line in a tour bus. Correction: we weren’t driving at all. We were sitting idle in traffic. Therein was the reason we were visiting the subway in the first place. As the city slowly edges toward Bangkok-style traffic, officials have planned for three new lines in time for the 2008 games, and are promising the world’s largest subway system by 2020. Though it’s not set to open until September, the city is already testing, tuning and touting the north-south line 5, the first addition to its soon-to-be rapidly expanding subway network.

For now though, one of the only clues to that future lies beneath Chang’an Dajie, at an unassuming underpass across the street from Oriental Plaza. A couple of young security guards jumped up from their naps when we arrived, promptly opening a shiny metal gate to let us descend into the newest Beijing underground. The floors and walls were still clean, the escalator unfinished; at the bottom of a long set of stairs we found ourselves in what looked like an unfinished set from Star Wars. Gleaming signs, LED lights, a glass-encased control room, and cables rising from the floor waiting to connect to card-scanning turnstiles that will replace the subway’s ubiquitous ticket ladies. Before a tear could rise up, we regained our senses and scanned the room for other signs of Beijing’s “high-tech” Olympics: lasers, 3-D maps, new bathrooms.

And then we saw the future, hanging along the platform: large flat-screen TVs showing traffic information, news tickers and, for no reason at all, the latest Harry Potter movie. TVs also hung on the walls of the train itself, showing slow-motion images of athletes hurling themselves through the air interspersed with dramatic ribbon dancing and every now and then, the Beijing 2008 logo. Come the Olympics, commuters will be able to watch the sporting events live. As we stood in front of a screen and beneath a stream of cool air – having been whisked to the new Yonghegong subway station, which looks slightly like a modern version of the temple above – it dawned on us: might the lazier among us pass on the actual games (or on a visit to Yonghegong for that matter) for the air-conditioned idyll of the subway?

That good idea almost flew out of our heads as we wandered out of the car; more precisely, it was knocked out by a collision with the overhead handrail. That, along with the subway door itself, was noticeably shorter than on the city’s current subway. “You’re too tall,” a subway official told us with a smile. “But what about Yao Ming?” we asked. No answer.

Height prejudices aside, the subway is a definite improvement: the stations are spiffier (if a bit sterile), the train’s wider on the inside and, like Hong Kong’s MTR, has no doors in-between cars, a cool trick that turns the subway cars into one long moving hallway. And somehow, the air underground felt clean. Plus: three kuai is a lot cheaper than a ticket to the Olympics.

Permalink 09:17:53, From that's Beijing's City Scene