With the Olympic flame well on it’s way on the journey to Beijing, organizers are gearing up for the big event when the doors open on August 8th. - 24th 2008. With a little over 120 days to go until the gates open to the Olympic stadium, much will have to be done.
Despite all the action that is yet to come we wanted to take a look behind the scenes and see where this all started.
When a city gets awarded with the coveted prestige of hosting the Olympic Games, architects and planners run amok for some time to design the best possible structure to hold masses of people.
Continue reading ‘Olympic Stadium Designs, And The Winner Is…!’
This high tech building is to be the control and data centre of the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
Notice how it bears resemblance to a circuit board or digital bar code? Well, it was intentional and has been named the Digital building, which pretty much reflects its digital design scheme and personifies the promise of the Beijing Municipal Government to present the Beijing Olympics or Digital Olympics as it is often referred as, with the highest technological content on offer by any Olympics in history.
Continue reading ‘Digital Beijing Building’
The first project in our series is the ‘Beijing Great Wheel’
In a bid to boost tourism in China, construction has begun for the soon to-be ‘tallest & largest observation Ferris wheel’ in the world. The Ferris named, ‘Beijing Great Wheel’ is to be located in eastern Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, venue for beach volleyball in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and would stand at a soaring 680 feet (207 metres) dwarfing the London Eye which is about 135 metres (443 feet) and the Singapore flyer which towers at 165 metres (541 feet).
Beijing wheel is expected have 48 air-conditioned capsules with each capsule having the capacity of carrying 40 passengers.
Continue reading ‘Beijing’s Great Observation Wheel’
Although Dubai appears to be the focal point of global construction at the moment, there appears to be a lack of attention on China’s construction boom that has been fuelled by its burgeoning economy and the upcoming summer Olympic games taking place in its capital Beijing.
This week would be our Chinese Construction week as we attempt to cover some of China’s most impressive structures (both completed & under construction) and some of China’s most creative architects that are now beginning to rise to global prominence.
FiftyTwoDegrees, the ‘bent’ 86 metre (282 feet) high-rise office building designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo has become the striking centrepiece of the Nijmwegen International Business Park in the Netherlands.
Whilst its upper sections are a conventional right angled tower design, its lower floors have a uniquely designed wider inclined base.
FiftyTwoDegrees tower spans over 20,000sqm (65,617 sq. feet) of office space, with lots of contemporary communal open space.
Continue reading ‘The ‘bent’ FiftyTwoDegrees Tower’
How does a building earn the name “the Marilyn Monroe building”, well it has to be curvy for starters and then rotate 360 degrees from top to bottom. This is exactly what the Beijing based design maestro Yansong Ma, founder of architectural design firm MAD Studio did.
It is one of five residential towers in the Absolute condo community development in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Standing at 167m, the 56 storey high-rise would be the tallest building in Mississauga, and the tallest multi-storey building in Ontario outside of Toronto.
It is the winner of the international design competition of the Absolute Towers that received over 90 submissions from 70 countries around the world.
Continue reading ‘The Curvy ‘Monroe’ 360 degree Tower’
This video is the proposed showcase of ‘Moscow City’ – the Moscow International Business Centre.
Moscow International Business Centre (MIBC) is an ambitious regeneration project in the Presnenskaya Embankment area in the heart of Moscow’s Kremlin.
The master plan of MIBC was conceived by the Russian government as far back in 1992 with an intention to convert Presnenskaya, an old urban area with old factories and industrial complexes toEastern Europe’s central business hub.
The management company of the project, CITY Joint Stock Company (CITTY JSC), a joint venture between the Russian government and private investors claim that it is currently Russia’s and Europe’s largest investment and construction project.
We recently covered the construction completion of one of the towers - Naberezhnaya Tower. We have to say it is a very ambitious engineering project with 15 distinct developments spread across 30 plots on an enormous 100ha site. The estimated project cost is $12 billion with a completion date slated for 2010.
We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one and cover more of it’s developments in future posts.
