Shanghai: Land of the rising
trapezoid By
Jeremy Hurewitz
SHANGHAI - The wave of building
construction that has swept China at an
ever-increasing pace since the 1980s has become
possibly the biggest building spree in history,
and the radical transformation thus wrought is
nowhere more obvious than in the country's most
grand metropolis, Shanghai. Almost 7,000
buildings of more than 11 stories have been built
in the city since
1990
(New York, by contrast, has managed a mere 5,500
in total). So skyscrapers are not exactly a
novelty in Shanghai.
But
the Shanghai World Financial Center (WFC), now
under
construction in the financial district of Pudong,
is big even by Chinese standards. The WFC is set
to become one of the world's tallest buildings, at
492 meters surpassing even its heralded neighbor,
the 88-story, 421-meter Jin Mao Tower, home to
"the highest hotel in the world", the Grand Hyatt.
Intense construction activity on the WFC
is now underway, but if and when it reaches its
planned height, it would become the world's
tallest inhabited building - only for a brief
period, however, since the Burj Dubai, now being
built in the eponymous Persian Gulf city-state,
would greatly exceed it at a possible 705 meters
(though the Burj's ultimate height has been kept
secret).
The story of the WFC began in
1997, when Japanese developer Minoru Mori, of Moru
Building Co Ltd, began planning a supertower in
Shanghai, and hired New York architecture firm
Kohn Pedersen Fox for the design. Chief architect
William Pedersen said in a television interview
that he was inspired by "the ancient Chinese
period when the symbols of the square prism and
the circular disk seemed to take on a great
importance for the relationship of the earth to
the sky".
The form of the building thus
became a rectangular prism, but with sliced,
tapering sides, so the shape became more delicate
at the top. Since, at such heights, wind loads
(the horizontal forces put on a building by wind
currents) become a serious concern, Pedersen
designed the building with a cylindrical opening -
what he called a "circular moon gate" - to relieve
those pressures and stabilize the behemoth (see
illustration, figure 1).
Wind tunnel tests
showed the moon gate would achieve its practical
purpose, but the feature created an unanticipated
and embarrassing problem. In Pedersen's words:
"What I had, in my own mind, thought of as
representing a moon gate, in fact, had been
reversed in their own mind to represent the rising
sun [of Japan]."
Architect Leslie Robertson
(famed for his work on the World Trade Center in
New York), whose firm Leslie Robertson Associates
was hired by Mori in early 2001 to work on the
project, added: "As
originally presented to
Shanghai, the moon gate, this great hole was not
very well appreciated because it was seen as an
emblem of Japan. And the mayor of Shanghai was not
the tiniest bit interested [in that]."
To
solve the problem, Pedersen suggested a bridge
through the aperture to "diminish the power of the
circular gesture" and "symbolize the bringing of
the two sides together". This idea was initially
accepted, and led to a new configuration (see
figure 2).
Further events intervened,
however, before work could begin in earnest. Just
as the building's foundation had been laid, the
Asian economic crisis forced a halt to
construction work for several years, and Mori
waited for market conditions to improve.
Meanwhile, the September 11, 2001 attacks
in the US caused architects and contractors
worldwide to reassess supertall projects,
particularly with regard to safety and structural
stability in the event of major fires. When work
finally resumed in 2003, criticism of the design
continued, and ultimately, in October 2005, a new
design was unveiled, with the circle completely
eliminated, replaced with a trapezoid shape (see
figure 3). As of this writing, the first 20-odd
stories of the WFC's structural framework are
complete, and its height is increasing almost
daily.
Money and minefields In
many ways, the "moon gate" affair symbolizes the
experiences of foreign architecture firms in
today's China, where a minefield of political and
nationalist sensitivities mixes with a fecund
environment for developers, all spiced with the
peculiarities of the Chinese way of doing
business.
Both an immense business
opportunity, and a sense of mission, seem to draw
foreign architects to China. The Middle Kingdom
and its booming economy offer a chance for many
architects to work on projects whose size and
scale are perhaps once-in-a-lifetime
opportunities. Many architects also speak of the
chance to make their mark on a society that is
changing before the world's eyes. But a peculiar
form of both self-censorship and cultural
preservation colors their work in the country.
"The aesthetic value of ancient China has
been lost," lamented Jeff Bonner, a partner in
Urban Fabric Architecture. Originally from New
Zealand, Bonner contrasts his work in China with
other cities he's worked in, in particular London,
where an architect has to keep in mind the history
of the city, and often even the particularities of
the neighborhood, when designing.
In
China, planners want the buildings up as soon as
possible and generally the design called for is
either radically modern or derived from classical
European elements. With traditional Chinese
buildings being torn down to make way for these
foreign structures, there is inevitably a net loss
of traditional Chinese architecture. This is
particularly true in Beijing, where hutongs
(traditional alleys) continue to be erased to make
way for the government's ambitious plans for the
2008 Olympics.
Bonner contrasted the
situation in Beijing with the work he's doing on
an 18-story hotel to be built right below
Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), one of China's major
cultural landmarks, and a United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) world heritage site.
But Bonner's
firm was not given any instructions about how the
hotel should reflect cultural and local
sensitivities (though some would argue that
putting up an 18-story hotel below a natural
wonder renders the idea of sensitivity null and
void). So Bonner and his colleagues elected to go
with a gray and white color scheme, which
reflected both their desire to build something
that blends as well as possible with the landscape
(gray and white are the traditional colors of
buildings in the surrounding Anhui province) and which
they hope will also anticipate the double critique
that they are expecting from both Chinese and
UNESCO officials. Such anticipation, and a lack of
input in the early stages, is typical of the
guesswork that foreign architects have to
undertake when designing in China.
Working
in such a way is frustrating, since most
architects are not used to having their work
changed at late stages. A client will typically
approve a certain design only to later grow
worried about the reaction from government
officials. "The client realizes that the
government thinks in a certain way and then they
want to mold the project around that," said Victor
Njo, an ethnic Chinese architect born in Indonesia
but raised in the Netherlands, who works for an
Australian architecture firm called PTW.
When
asked whether he has had to consider feng
shui (wind and water, Chinese geomancy) very
much, he said "Not really. Most of the basic
feng shui ideas - like [the idea that] the
back of [a] building should be facing the mountain
and the front facing the sea - are just design
common sense." Njo expressed the same frustration
as many other architects with clients "sticking
their nose in at later stages". To Njo, issues
related to such things as feng shui become
primarily an excuse to meddle or make changes.
Friends first, buildings
later All of the architects spoken to for
this story expressed strong reactions to the need
for bonding with clients to develop guanxi
- the crucial system of relationships that
underlies all business in China. Some find the
endless dinners, rounds of karaoke and shots of
baijiu (a vodka-like distilled spirit)
exasperating and irrelevant to their work. Others
are drawn to the almost ritualistic courtship that
goes on between client and architect as the client
evaluates whether a particular architect or firm
is suitable to put up their building.
"We
are trained to come straight to the point," said
Johannes Reinsch of the German firm Engel und
Zimmerman, which is involved with the National
Library building being constructed in Beijing.
"But when there [were] difficult questions and I
[handed] over my priority list right away there
was no reply at all. I had to learn that first, we
become friends, and then we do business."
Reinsch, like many architects, said that
while there were chances to do big things in
China, it was often difficult to navigate the
process of finding work, as that process was not
only culturally very different from the West, but
also suffered from a lack of transparency.
"There are [many] more opportunities in
China, it is much more challenging in terms of the
type and size of projects, the scale of the
projects. But on the other hand the risk is also
higher. For instance, you go to competitions to
get a project and you have to put your best staff
on, present models and presentations, which is all
a big investment. But the system is not clear for
us and it is not easy to evaluate your chances and
whether you should even try to get in on a
project."
In the West, after a bidding
process, a jury will award a winner, then there
will be a detailed report about why the winner was
chosen and usually, critiques of the individual
bids submitted. "In China you only hear [back] if
you won, sometimes if you entered a finalist
stage. Usually it is like a black hole. You get no
information about the process, [consequently] you
can't get better," said Reinsch. Many architects
fret that the competitions are dog-and-pony shows
with winners often chosen in advance rendering the
process a colossal waste of time and money.
The government threw another wrench into
architects' work on June 1 last year when it
slapped a 5.5% tax on the sale of properties sold
within two years of purchase, in an effort to cool
a sizzling real estate market, in which
speculation threatened to create a dangerous
bubble.
Suddenly, developers pulled back
projects that they had just commissioned, and work
dried up. In the West, architects would normally
have ample warning about new legislation that
would affect their market, not to mention the
chance to make their voice heard about that
legislation. In China, the tax was introduced as
an edict from Beijing.
Many foreign
architects working in China feel that the
well-known Chinese tendency to rush projects and
use subpar materials comes from a sense of
transience that is hard for Westerners to
understand.
One must remember that Chinese
buildings have a shorter life cycle; a building
that might be put through a renovation in the West
when it ages is often torn down in China. But
perhaps deeper than this is a sense that China has
experienced such turmoil in its past that nothing
is permanent, even buildings thousands of meters
tall.
Jeremy Hurewitz is a
Shanghai-based freelance journalist. He edits a
monthly series on Asia for Project Syndicate.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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construction in the financial district of Pudong,
is big even by Chinese standards. The WFC is set
to become one of the world's tallest buildings, at
492 meters surpassing even its heralded neighbor,
the 88-story, 421-meter Jin Mao Tower, home to
"the highest hotel in the world", the Grand Hyatt.
originally presented to
Shanghai, the moon gate, this great hole was not
very well appreciated because it was seen as an
emblem of Japan. And the mayor of Shanghai was not
the tiniest bit interested [in that]." 
