CCTV – Television Cultural Centre

Against the strong architectural shape and definition of CCTV, the adjacent Television Cultural Centre establishes a more informal quality. The multiple functions required by the freely accessible public program - a theatre, digital cinemas, recording studios, press conference and exhibition space, and five-star hotel with ballroom, conference rooms, and spa - are stacked to form an accumulation of structurally independent volumes. A continuous skin encompasses this assemblage: starting from the ground up, the skin extends upwards to form the angular, sloping roof of the long podium, and then becomes the vertical facade of the tower, wrapping up over the top of the building and down the other side, defining the actual shape of the fundamentally shapeless building - a freeze frame of apparent instability.