Asia Times: China still follows high-rise ambitions


	September 27, 2001	atimes.com

China

China still follows high-rise ambitions
By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - While corporate businesses around the world may be rethinking their preferences for downtown skyscrapers - the towering symbols of economic strength - in favor of low suburban buildings as a result of the September 11 attacks, Chinese urban planners believe that the trend will not affect their long-term architectural blueprints.

On the contrary, Beijing's successful bid for the 2008 Olympic Games is likely to spur even more high-rise ambitions. Recent media reports have suggest that by the time Beijing greets its Olympic guests, the Chinese capital will have its own twin towers that will rival any proud skyscraper in the world.

Originally planned as a single tower, the 500-meter-tall International Trade Center in the future Olympic Green Park will be redesigned as twin towers. "Those towers will win honor for our country and nation," Jiang Wei, an official from Beijing Municipal Institute for Architectural Design, said. "One tower seems a bit lonely, but two would look symmetrical and harmonize with the capital's overall architecture."

Symmetry of architecture is indeed a main feature of China's imperial capital, but many disagree that the concept should be applied to Beijing's growing forest of skyscrapers. "It is a queer scheme," says Professor Peng Peigen from the Architecture Department of Qinghua University. "Having twin towers on the main axis of Beijing's city layout would obstruct the panorama of the Forbidden City, which is Beijing's true landmark."

The envisaged twin towers of Beijing International Trade Center are only one of the many planned high-rises now on architects' planning boards. Earlier this year, Beijing awarded US developer Johnson Fain Partners the rights to plan an entire new business district, complete with 55 skyscrapers. By the end of 2001, the sleek structure of the 460-meter-tall Shanghai World Financial Center will rise in the city's Pudong district, snatching the distinction of being the world's tallest building from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

China already has four of the tallest buildings in the world. The country's tallest building is the 420-meter-high Jinmao Tower in Shanghai, which ranks as the world's third tallest. Its planners once considered adding a pagoda atop the building's roof to earn the title of world's tallest edifice. Those plans were later abandoned, but more high-rises were designed to satiate China's appetite for tall monuments of prosperity. In the eyes of many urban planners here, gleaming skyscrapers embody not only modernization, but also symbolize national pride.

Some experts lament China's obsession for skyscrapers, saying it is a faulty display of modern ideas and economic strength. "If the world's tallest building appears in China, it means our nation lacks an adequate understanding of the trend in architectural development in the 21st century," argued Wang Mingxian, editor of Architect magazine. "The age of energy-consuming skyscrapers has come to an end."

Before the appearance of Jinmao Tower, Wang fought vigourously against the skyscraper mania, but eventually gave up. "It is of no use," he said. "Skyscraper mania is sweeping cities throughout the country - from Shenzhen, where China's first skyscraper appeared, to Shanghai and Beijing. This may come to a halt two decades from now, but then it will be too late to solve numerous kinds of problems."

Asked if the toppling of Manhattan's signature twin towers will affect Beijing's own project to construct twin towers, an official from the Municipal Institute for Architectural Design said that Beijing International Trade Center is an unlikely target for terrorist attacks.

Li Guohong, a planning official with Beijing's Central Business District Office, said that rather than scaling down plans, the attacks on New York should make developers think harder about how to improve evacuation measures. "New York's World Trade Center used to boast that its evacuation time was less than 30 minutes, but if that had been so, there wouldn't have been such high casualties," he said.

(Inter Press Service)

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