Modern building in Beijing

Who said in Beijing, there is no modern building? there are so many new modern building these days in Beijing such as this SOHO GALAXY in central of Beijing.

SOHO China is honored to entrust the leading design firm, Pritzker Prize winning Zaha Hadid Architects, to lend their design concept to this development. The Laureate Pritzker Prize has been considered the "Nobel Prize" of architecture. Zaha Hadid was the first female recipient of this prize since its establishment 26 years before. Full of imagination and surrealism, this unique design concept makes Galaxy SOHO a new architectural landmark in Beijing on par with the Bird's Nest National Stadium and the CCTV Tower. Zaha’s master pieces in China include: Guangzhou Opera House, Galaxy SOHO and SOHO Peaks in Beijing, Sky SOHO in Shanghai.

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA)

Colloquially described as The Giant Egg, is an opera house in Beijing, People's Republic of China. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. Construction started in December 2001 and the inaugural concert was held in December 2007.

The location, immediately to the west of Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, and near the Forbidden City, combined with the theater's futuristic design, created considerable controversy.Paul Andreu countered that although there is indeed value in ancient traditional Chinese architecture, Beijing must also include modern architecture, as the capital of the country and an international city of great importance. His design, with large open space, water, trees, was specially designed to complement the red walls of ancient buildings and the Great Hall of the People, in order to melt into the surroundings as opposed to standing out against them.

CCTV Headquarters 

Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the new CCTV building is one of the largest office buildings in the world. The angular 49-story towers appear about to topple, yet the structure is carefully designed to withstand earthquakes. Jagged cross sections made with some 10,000 tons of steel form the sloping towers.

Home to China's only broadcaster, China Central Television, the CCTV building has studios, production facilities, theaters, and offices.

The main building is not a traditional tower, but a loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 473,000 m2 (5,090,000 sq ft) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building's facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone. Because of its radical shape, it's said that a taxi driver first came up with its nickname dà kùchǎ (大裤衩), roughly translated as, "big boxer shorts". Locals often refer to it as "big pants".

The building was built in three buildings that were joined to become one and a half buildings on 30 May 2007. In order not to lock in structural differentials this connection was scheduled in the early morning when the steel in the two towers cooled to the same temperature. The CCTV building was part of a media park intended to form a landscape of public entertainment, outdoor filming areas, and production studios as an extension of the central green axis of the CBD.

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture won the contract from the Beijing International Tendering Co. to construct the CCTV Headquarters and the Television Cultural Center by its side on 1 January 2002, after winning an international design competition. The jury included architect Arata Isozaki and critic Charles Jencks. It is among the first of 300 new towers in the new Beijing CBD. Administration, news, broadcasting, and program production offices and studios are all contained inside.

CCTV Headquarters was officially opened by the Chairman on 1 January 2008. Among the distinguished guests at the opening were Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, Wen Jiabao and Guo Jinlong