By Andreas Landwehr, DPA,
Beijing : While architecture should inspire, the “naked truth” now uncovered by Chinese media about the ambitious new Beijing headquarters of the state-run television CCTV might go a bit too far.
Beijing residents initially likened the buildings, designed by Dutch-German architects Rem Kolhaas and Ole Scheeren, to trouser legs or boxer shorts, but critics now detect the shapes of the male and female genitals in the post-modern designs.
“The main building looks like a naked woman on her knees, with her backside facing the viewer – and the annex building has the shape of a phallus,” wrote Xiao Mo, a retired professor of architecture of Beijing’s prestigious Qinghua University.
Outraged over the “giant bottom”, Xiao joined forces with others who consider it a national disgrace, which is believed to have cost about $1 billion, to be torn down. “I cannot think of any reason not to blow it up,” he said.
The scholar, whose comments were widely distributed on China’s internet, is a known critic of foreign architects who can live out their wildest fantasies in China’s construction boom. The association with a buttocks is not as far fetched as it may sound. It made its first, ill-judged appearance in the magazine Content, published by Kolhaas’s company OMA.
A content cover designer mock-up shows the CCTV arch next to a porn shot of a naked woman on her knees, her buttocks and legs allegedly mirroring the shape of the glass-and-steel construction.
“Architecture like you’ve never seen it,” a caption says. The tactless cover was never actually used, but – together with other rejected drafts – still found its way into the appendix.
The cover for the 2004 magazine edition instead shows caricatures of former US president George W. Bush, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in a Rambo-like pose.
OMA chose this cover “in which the CCTV building is presented as a positive and shining symbol of a changing world order – which reflects our sincere intention with the design,” Kolhaas said. There was no hidden meaning, he stressed, rejecting accusations about the building being a nasty joke.
The porn designs are not new and have been accessible on the Chinese art website www.art.218.com for years. Koolhaas expressed surprise over the controversy: “We regret the renewed attention, and distance ourselves emphatically from the interpretations attributed to these images.”
The roots of the debate, however, lie much deeper. Many Chinese are annoyed that foreign, and not home-grown, architects are designing prestigious buildings. Also, many bemoan that billions are wasted on those showpieces of China’s emerging power.
Costs for the new CCTV complex are estimated at $1 billion, although nobody dares publicise the true pricetag.
What is more, China’s all-powerful state television, which built itself this monument, often enough faces criticism for being a stilted propaganda organ providing only homespun content.
A fire which earlier this year destroyed the almost-completed annex, depicted in another draft for the 2004 Content magazine as a life-sized penis with two semi-naked women, led to little-concealed gloating in Beijing.
A gigantic fireworks display that the TV station staged without a permit on the occasion of the Chinese New Year had the 159-metre building up in flames as if it was built of dry tinder.
The question of what to do with the ruin is delaying the grand opening of the building, which maybe is simply too avant-garde for many Chinese.
German architect Scheeren describes the main building’s two slanted, L-shaped towers which are connected at a hight of 160 metres with a 70-metre-high projection, as a “cage, or a tube folded in space”.
He sees a loop, which could also hint at a new organisational structure for CCTV, doing away with vertical hierarchies.
Chinese artist and architect Ai Weiwei, who co-designed the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium, defended Kolhaas.
“I am sure simple imitation of genitals was not his inspiration,” he was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
The Communist Party organ Zhongguo Qingnianbao took a more philosophical approach to the buttocks controversy. “The worship of procreation is a widespread custom in primitive societies,” it said.