766 SEEKING THE CITY

CCTV and the Politics of Mediaspace

FRANCES HSU Georgia Institute of Technology

This paper examines the Chinese State Television min, writing in the 1920s ands 30s, Paris was “the network (CCTV) tower in by OMA as a case center of [the] world of things... [and] the most study for ’s understanding of power. dreamed-of of their objects.1 Manhattan, for Kool- The CCTV building confl ates media, the market haas, working on in the 1970s, and power in one statement embodying the val- Manhattan was a city of “two dimensional disci- ues and aspirations of one of the most centralized pline and three-dimensional anarchy;” “a practi- governments in the world that is intent on mod- cal Luna Park” of technological infrastructures of ernization despite all its pitfalls. building types like the skyscraper (Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth building, Hugh Ferris’ The City of To- Koolhaas’s work, spanning from the delirium of morrow) and places like Coney Island, Rockefeller Manhattan’s commodifi ed version of modern ar- Center and Radio City. This was “a universe paral- chitecture to later work in SMLXL, Project on the lel to sober and abstract European modernism--to City and Content, might be seen to mark a par- imagine life in the metropolis as a deeply irratio- ticular confl uence of media, power and place. nal experience that uses sparkling-new technolo- Within this tension, projects such as the libraries gies to exacerbate desire.”2 Today, New York is (Jussieux, TGB, Seattle) and ZKM reconcile differ- “delirious no more” (according to Koolhaas) and ing, ever-expanding publics through media and its public space is weakened by technological devel- representation, affi rming the power of knowledge opments at the same time that buildings are more and information in the hands of enlightened insti- and more becoming media infrastructures. Within tutions to resist the tranquillized rites of media- this confl uence of media and building, and as a tized consumerism and foster a “new” culture. The lens for viewing CCTV, what has emerged since Dutch Embassy, European Union Headquarters Benjamin’s attempt to positively use mass culture and Universal Studios are further case studies. and technology in the era of liberal capitalism, in our own time designated as late, or disorga- A point of reference for historicizing the experi- nized capitalism and fl exible accumulation, is the ences of perception, power and space in the 20th reconfi guration of market and place through the century is the writing of Walter Benjamin. Benja- media industry. Not only through buildings that min focused on how the commodifi cation of goods, use media materials and technologies but also by development of new communication and building the cultural power of the media corporation, pri- techniques brought on by the fi rst “mechanical vate or public, that is reconfi guring the city both war” led to changing social relations and effected locally and globally. Koolhaas, meanwhile, acts the mind and body. Technology was the catalyst, out Benjamin’s prediction for capitalist society: actively transforming perception and participation culture’s need to compensate for the lost aura of in an urban realm comprised of panorama and art and artist with ‘phony spell’ of the commod- arcades. His strand of modernist subjectivity is ity and star. Taking on the role of pragmatist, he linked to the delirium of Manhattan’s commodi- continues to inhabit the extremes and contradic- fi ed version of modern architecture. For Benja- tions of the profession, his work becoming part of CCTV AND THE POLITICS OF MEDIASPACE 767

the dream world of urban space and images that at the same time “heartbreakingly beautiful” and colonize the everyday. a “guilty instrument of despair”: this ambivalence is “architecture’s true nature.” Exodus exhibits VOLUNTARY PRISONERS both idealism and pragmatism based in the urban fl ight to demonstrate the potential of architecture In the early 70s, Koolhaas problematized the pow- to be both ideal and real. Koolhaas recent critique er of architecture in his thesis project at the Ar- of the project as exclusionary, is simultaneously a chitectural Association entitled “The Wall as rejection of faith in architecture as an instrument Architecture.” He wanted to demonstrate how the of social change: “Were not division, enclosure aesthetic and material qualities of an architectural and exclusion-- which defi ned the wall’s perfor- object were secondary to the production of archi- mance and explained its effi ciency--the essential tectural meaning. His project was subsequently stratagems of any architecture? In comparison, reworked and submitted with , Mad- the 1960s dream of architecture’s liberating po- elon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis as an ironic tential--in which I had been marinating for years response to the 1972 Casabella competition “The as a student--seemed feeble rhetorical play.”3 City as Meaningful Environment.” The Berlin Wall, at the time a tool of exclusion, become an instru- Exodus is Koolhaas’s fi rst “big” project. Bigness ment of collectivity when displaced to the city of was a concept that rectifi ed the disappearance of . The project was renamed Exodus, or the community values in the contemporary city, that Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, the title re- allowed Koolhaas “to explore new defi nitions of ferring to the second book of the Bible which re- collectivity after the demise of the public realm-- counts the departure of the Israelites from slavery public man--eroded by the onslaught of the media, in Egypt, their journey across the Red Sea and pressures of the virtual, multiple privatizations, through the wilderness, and Moses’ giving of the the end of the street, the plaza, etc.”4 Descriptions Ten Commandments. The parable is a model for of CCTV invariably list its impressive size: The site prophesying architecture’s power to cure the ur- covers four blocks in the new fi nancial centre of ban condition and the potential of building to af- Beijing with a total area of 180,000 square me- fect the life and death of the prisoners. ters. The 553,000 m2 headquarters will be among the fi rst of 300 towers constructed in Beijing’s new Formally, Exodus was a blend of the iconic models central business district. The project involves 400 developed by Leonidov in the thirties and the Sur- designers and engineers on 3 continents working realist monumentality of Superstudio’s Continuous 24/7 for 5 years. It is ostensibly the second-larg- Monument. It can be seen as both the culmination est building in the world next to the Pentagon.5 and a last gasp of the visionary architecture of the CCTV attempts to create urban space rather than 1960s. Exodus was a giant strip that divided the displace it, its intention to create a sculptural spa- city of London in two, a linear zone that enclosed tial effect in the tradition of urban ensembles like a series of square blocks for specifi c activities. Rockefeller Center. The building’s central cavity, The enclave was accessible only from one door. or ‘window’ opening, frames the adjacent cultural Inside, one was conscious of being kept in cap- center, also part of the project along with a sur- tivity in an artifi cial metropolitan universe. Each rounding media park. Koolhaas had acknowledged quadrant was a place for contradictory behaviors the authoritarian overtones of scale in SMLXL, in activated by institutional settings including baths, “Palace of the Soviets,” a fi ctional account of the a hospital, a park, a museum. Londoners would competition held in the 1930s. be so enticed to experience true metropolitan life that they would fl ee from the outskirts of the city IS SPACE POLITICAL? and escape to the new enclave at the city center, which becomes repopulated. They would beg to ...the concealment of Communist, red ideals... to save Utopia at a moment when it was being con- become inmates, voluntary prisoners of the strip. tested on all sides, when the world kept accumu- lating proofs of its ravages and miseries . . . in- In this most elaborated allusion to imprisonment frared©, the ideology of reform, is a campaign to an historically signifi cant form is re-invested with preempt the demise of Utopia, a project to conceal 19th century ideals within the realities of the 21st meaning and given psychological dimension. It is century. --Project on the City, Vol. 1 (2002) 768 SEEKING THE CITY

OMA was awarded the CCTV commission in 2002, duction and services, the entire process of TV- the building’s exterior envelope will be fi nished for making - in a loop of interconnected activities. Two the Olympics in 2008 with move-in scheduled for structures rise from a common production plat- 2010. Thirty years ago, Delirious New York de- form that is partly underground. Each has a differ- picted the New York Athletic Club as the quintes- ent character: one is dedicated to broadcasting, sential skyscraper. This building type, juxtaposing the second to services, research and education; dissimilar activities such as apartment, golf course they join at the top to create a cantilevered pent- and restaurant, is the essence of the 20th century house for the management. A new icon is formed, and such contained the garden of paradise, where not the predictable 2-dimensional tower ‘soaring’ Adam and Eve and temptation (the apple, mark skyward, but a truly, 3-dimensional experience, of knowledge and loss) have been usurped by two a canopy that symbolically embraces the entire boxers eating oysters at an institution dedicated population... The consolidation of the TV program to the body. The idea of the skyscraper has since in a single building allows each worker to be per- informed a number of OMA projects. The Beijing manently aware of the nature of the work of his tower however is OMA’s fi rst skyscraper commis- coworkers - a chain of interdependence that pro- sion. motes solidarity rather than isolation, collaboration instead of opposition. The building itself contrib- CCTV may be the part of the most Chinese en- utes to the coherence of the organization. While deavors, the revisioning of the urban landscape, CCTV is a secured building for staff and technol- given the question of identity and search for a ogy, public visitors will be admitted to the ‘loop’, mode of development inherent to the state of that a dedicated path circulating through the building country. China has historically been driven by ab- and connecting to all elements of the program and solute forms of power, its urban and architectural offering spectacular views across the multiple fa- development occurring in three historical patterns: cades towards the CBD, Beijing, and the Forbid- large-scale destruction and replacement of urban den City. The Television Cultural Center (TVCC) fabrics to inaugurate changes of emperors or dy- is an open, inviting structure. It accommodates nasties; massive relocations of populations; and visitors and guests, and will be freely accessible highly planned urban confi gurations enabled by to the public. On the ground fl oor, a continuous centralized and unchallenged forms of authority. lobby provides access to the 1500-seat theatre, Concentrated authority gave shape to cities such a large ballroom, digital cinemas, recording stu- as traditional Beijing. It also wiped them clean, dios and exhibition facilities. The building hosts accommodating a new society with luxury apart- the international broadcasting centre for the 2008 ment complexes, offi ce towers and shopping cen- Olympic Games. The tower accommodates a fi ve- ters. “Power today may not exist in the singular star hotel; guests enter at a dedicated drop-off form of an Emperor or a Chairman, but it is man- from the east of the building and ascend to the aged and exercised with enough strength to chan- fi fth fl oor housing the check-in as well as restau- nel the possibilities for urban experience, and to rants, lounges, and conference rooms. The ho- choose which urban traditions to preserve.”6 One tel rooms are occupying both sides of the tower, additional factor today is the presence of not only forming a spectacular atrium above the landscape many foreign fi rms but also Chinese architects of public facilities. On the block in the south-east, who worked and studied abroad in the 1990s and the Media Park is conceived as an extension of the who have since returned to the mainland to start proposed green axis of the CBD. It is open to the their mostly independent architectural practices, public for events and entertainment, and can be bringing with them an infusion of western archi- used for outdoor fi lming.” tectural critical thought to fi ll the “brain drain” left by Communism. The CCTV building, a locus of media production, has itself become a media construct. The proj- According to the OMA website, “The project pro- ect has spawned web pages and blogs, as well poses an iconographic constellation of two high- as the publication of Volume, co-founded in 2005 rise structures that actively engage the city space: by Koolhaas, Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, new CCTV and TVCC. CCTV combines administration Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and offi ces, news and broadcasting, program pro- in , as a “global idea platform...dedi- CCTV AND THE POLITICS OF MEDIASPACE 769

cated to experimentation and the production of work with the organization of the program to turn new forms of architectural discourse.” Despite an the building and the broadcasting company into opaque design and building process with regard a media machine that is not structured hierarchi- to the government and the local architecture fi rm cally but rather sets up direct interaction between ECADI (East China Architecture & Design Institute public and media. It addresses the media effect, Shanghai), with the many questions being posed the contradiction between place and virtual media by the Chinese and architecture community, the in which people don’t need to share space because (unfi nished) building has itself become an event. they are all connected digitally, to produce a virtu- The building construction was itself an event, as al audio-visual product. The role of the individual the two sloping steel structures were connected at in the production process is changing as design dawn. (The legs have different solar heat gain be- staff, creative directors and accountants all sit in cause of their positions and will be closest to the front of a computer. OMA associate and project same temperature after cooling off overnight.) architect Ole Scheeren emphasizes the intention to give visitors and occupants the impression of Many questions are being asked in the Chinese being involved in the development of a new real- and architecture community. As a landmark is the ity. This is manifest in the two circulation loops, CCTV building meaningful to Chinese society? Is one for production, which is private, and another its structural complexity and cost irresponsible? for emission (consumption), which is public. The CCTV is also part of a larger, more general dis- loop is literal, like an electrical circuit; symbolic cussion on the exploitation and future of migrant and conceptual, because there is no hierarchy; workers, and the destruction and displacement and structural, based on a system diagonal brac- of the old city structures and its inhabitants. (For ing. The loop is the genetics and the genesis of other projects in China, Koolhaas expresses a pre- the building concept, like a DNA helix. The use occupation with issues of preservation when he of program to engage the body in framing public presented the offi ce’s proposal for the competi- space can be contrasted to the Seattle Library’s tion for the extension to China’s National Museum reformulation of program. (In both cases program in Tiananmen Square. As with the project for the reinforces the division of labor.) extension to the Hermitage, the National Museum project addresses locality and site specifi city in CCTV was conceived as a continuous tube, with the context of the contemporary city.) Debates concrete fl oor plates, columns and edge beams are being played out on global vs. local, eastern held by a diagrid exoskeleton, a system of pat- vs. western interests. “Despite the design, the one terned diagonal bracing is the principal supporting thing CCTV lacks is freedom of expression. Daring element that resists gravity and lateral forces. Ini- new architecture, yes. Radical internalplanning, tially, the volume was materialized with a uniform sure. Sixteen channels broadcast by whizzy new diagonal grid wrapped about its surface. The grid digital technology, check. Yet, for all this, CCTV was then analyzed using an iterative computer- remains a sub-ministry of the government of the based method to establish zones of stress for the People’s Republic of China, its news programs diagonal members, from lowest to highest. In ar- controlled by the Propaganda Department.”7 eas of greatest stress, the density of the trian- gulated members was increased and/or members THE ANXIETY OF POWER were deformed to respond more precisely to the lateral and dead loads. In the areas where the “To renew the architectural profession and to main- uniform triangulation was providing more support tain a critical spirit, it is important to be aware, to than was required, redundant members were re- observe the emergent conditions and to theorize them, not to oppose two situations—the European moved or deformed to allow for greater stress- and the Asian, the eastern and the western—but es elsewhere. The result is an effi cient structure to establish parallels so that conclusions can be for resisting earthquakes as well. The cantilever drawn.” -- Koolhaas, Mutations overhang requires additional support in the form of a two-story-deep truss at the lower level of the How does the design for CCTV purport to estab- overhang, which transfers its load to the perime- lish a spatial logic radically different from the ones ter tube and to the foundation level. Formally, the around it and to what extent it can put itself at a building has precedents in buildings such as Peter distance from its context? OMA’s ambition was to 770 SEEKING THE CITY

Eisenman’s Max Reinhardt Haus in Berlin and Otto fi rm ECADI (East China Architecture & Design In- Spreckelson’s Grande Arche in Paris-La Defense. stitute Shanghai) entailed strategic maneuvering A contrast to the European enlightened model can signifi cant for the conception and execution of the be seen in the ideologically dissimilar project for building. a concert hall for Denmark national public broad- casting by Atelier Jean Nouvel. (www.dr.dk/ and Part of the importance of CCTV lies in the actual www.jeannouvel.fr). Nouvel uses screen technol- process of its happening at this moment in time. ogy in the facade to embody the “new multimedia In the face of writing that is confi ned in large part house” akin to OMA’s project for the ZKM. to description that follows the party line, lacking any real disclosure (a stance affi rmed by the ar- The building’s skin, made of glass and steel at- chitects), we are left to read the building itself tached to the surface of the diagonal bracing, is as the embodiment of its process. (It is like the both transparent and opaque, metaphorically and Forbidden City, another ungraspable, yet ever- literally. According to the offi ce, the goal was to present, depthless void at the center of the me- have the skin refl ect the structure of the build- tropolis.) The notable lack of irony in this project ing. However, the horizontal and verticals are not in contrast to Exodus suggests movement away expressed in the surface and only the diagonal from an oppositional stance but rather criticism bracing is read in a single plane of steel and glass. from within. In a similar way that SMLXL is a por- The surface is literally a glass skin like Semper’s trait of the work and the architect as well as a tablecloth separate from the structure, unlike the literal and metaphorical theory of the city, we can Seattle Library, whose skin stabilizes the building look at the media complex as a sort of allegorical structurally. That the building’s glazed skin will memory theater. be embedded with images representing a kind of international sign language of the media age, a ENDNOTES handshake, a computer, and other iconic images and text, only further reinforces the surface effect 1. Walter Benjamin, “Surrealism, Last Snapshot of the of the skin and contradicts the intention to make Intelligentsia.” the skin a refl ection of the structure. 2. Rem Koolhaas, “Delirious No More.” 3. Mark Leonard, The Financial Times, March 6, 2004. That architectural surfaces have a lure and a meaning of their own is not new. Even if we have 4. Rem Koolhaas, “Bigness, or the Problem of Large,” SMLXL. been taught to mistrust appearances, that “may be one of the reasons we pay them so much at- 5. Ole Scheeren, in an interview with the author. tention. We are always asked to look for the sub- 6. Sze Tsung Leong, History Images (Steidl Verlag, stance of things and not be distracted by superfi - 2007). cial matters.” In architecture today, the facade is 7. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/ often used to “spell out the nature of a building 0,,2156966,00.html that is fundamentally a mere container, but su- 8. Kurt W. Forster, “Surface Tension in Modern Architec- perfi cially registers an indices of its contents.”8 At ture,” 2005. CCTV, the surface registers the uneven stresses at work in the irregular form. If we understand the complex to be, according to OMA, an “icono- graphic constellation” then CCTV is not a building constructed from images but a building that is an image of stress anxiety. The concern with power relations is voiced by Scheeren. The architect de- scribes a seamless process--while the project’s complexity initially exceeded the capability of the OMA offi ce, there have been no alterations and changes made to the design during construction-- at the same time acknowledging that working with the Communist government and local architecture