China's newest architectural marvel unveiled

MANILA, Philippines - It may not be as grand as the Great Wall or the Imperial Palace, but another megastructure is set to rise in China that will join the world’s greatest engineering and architectural marvels of the modern times.

The Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing tower, scheduled to be unveiled in time for the 2010 Asian Games in October, is not only the world’s tallest television tower rising 610 meters, beating Toronto’s CN-tower at 535 meters, but is also said to be one of the most beautiful structures.

Currently under construction near Chigang Pagoda, Haizhu District, Guangzhou, China, the Canton Tower stands close to the Pearl River, which delta holds the key to the success of the area and historically has lied at the origin of the city developments.

The design

The 220 million Euro tower was designed by Information Based Architecture (IBA) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The design was selected in 2004, during an invited international competition involving the worldwide top of the architectural practices.

The competition not only required the design of the TV tower but also asked for the design of a 17.9-hectare park at its base and the master-plan for the surrounding 56.6-hectare which includes an elevated Plaza, pagoda-park, retail facilities, offices, television centre and hotel.

According to the government of Guangzhou (Canton), it is the most beautiful and gracious tower as well as the most technologically advanced design, and therefore best represents the city’s ambitions for the Canton region to become China’s most progressive modern industrial region.

The Guangzhou TV tower is a simple gracious symbol, that represents and rejuvenates the centuries-old industrial center of Canton of 10 million inhabitants in its ambition to be known as a progressive and environmentally sensitive modern metropolis that invests in cultural expressions and environmental improvements.

The concept of the tower consists of a simple idea of a twisted tower which went through an evolution of simple steps. The result: a highly complex and challenging design.

The Architects

IBA’s Mark Hemel and his partner Barbara Kuit collaborated with Arup, the global design and business-consulting firm headquartered in London, UK, for Canton Tower. IBA specializes in architecture, urbanism and design, and was short listed in 2002 for the Young Architects of the Year Award in the United Kingdom.

In a telephone interview with The STAR, Hemel noted that where most skyscrapers bear male features; being introvert, strong, straight, rectangular, and based on repetition, they wanted to create a female tower being complex, transparent, curvy and gracious.

“Our aim was to design a free-form tower with a rich and human-like identity that would represent Guangzhou as a dynamic and exciting city. We therefore wanted it to be non-symmetrical so that the building would look as if in movement and alive. The result is a tower like a sexy female, the very reason that earned her the nickname: supermodel,” he said.

For her part, Kuit said they wanted to create a tower that feels friendly to people, which was also the main challenge for a tower of this size.

“A tower that would not feel massive or dominating, but instead would invite people in, and would be rich in offering a variation in experiences. Many of these are designed as physical experiences. There is for instance a skywalk, a spiraling staircase outside the core, that takes visitors up through the structures waist while enjoying the view,” she said during the interview.

Super structure

The building has an external steel frame and inner central concrete core. Steel is the backbone of this building .The superstructure is made up of five small buildings hung together with gardens and skywalk to allow visitors to climb through the narrow waist of the building. The skywalk is an outdoor spiral staircase that goes from 168 to 334 meters.

Can this graceful tower withstand the series of typhoons that sweep through Guangzhou every year?

The team engaged scientist Professor Zhu Ledong of Tongji University who, after several tests, revealed that the tower would stand up to nature’s worst winds.

The other concern was if this tower can withstand another of nature’s wrath — earthquakes. Although Guangzhou is not in an earthquake hot spot, experts predict it might suffer a level six quake in the next two decades. An earthquake expert, Zhou Fulin of Guangzhou University was hired to test the tower’s strength. His team found weakness in the antenna and the waist but nothing that would jeopardize its structural integrity.