ICE London Civil Engineering Awards 2013
China Central Television New Headquarters
Structural, Geotechnical, Seismic, Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing & Fire Engineering & Security Consultants: Arup
Client: General Office of CCTV
Architect: Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Associate Architect & Engineer: East China Architectural Design & Research Institute
Principal Contractor: China State Construction and Engineering Corporation
Images 1,2,3,4,5,9 and 10 © Arup. Image 6 © Michael Liu/Arup. Image 7 © Chas Pope/Arup. Image 8 © Zhou Ruogo Architecture Photography.
The striking landmark China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing, Arup achieved what many people thought would be impossible: engineering a design for a building comprising two leaning towers; 234m and 194m tall; linked by a 15-storey cantilevered ‘overhang’ with a 10-storey podium. A competition-winning design proposed by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in collaboration with Arup.
OMA envisaged a building designed in a way to ecnoruage people from various disciplines to work more closely together, within the television industry: creatives; producers; cameramen, technicians and administrators working in a space to encourage creativity and innovation thus producing higher quality content due to the design of the workspace.
Completed in 2012, CCTV headquarters is the second biggest office building in the world. The engineering design is the product of an international team of Arup experts based in the London office. Early on, our team determined that the only way to deliver this incredible architectural form was to utilise the entire façade structure, creating an external continuous tube system. This provided the proportions that could resist the huge forces generated by the cranked and leaning form, as well as those generated by potential extreme seismic and wind conditions.
The building’s striking shape and form pushed and challenged the boundaries of prescriptive Chinese buildings codes. Arup undertook unprecedented performance-based analysis and gained approval by a panel of structural and seismic experts appointed by the Chinese Government.
Similarly, CCTV is one of the first buildings in China to use performance-based fire engineering rather than code-based design. Using evacuation simulation and structural fire assessment, including non-linear analysis of elements, we evidenced the merits of the building’s unique architectural features.
During the construction period our team acknowledged, in advance of the two leaning towers being connected, these would be prone to independent movement from wind and surface temperature variations in direct sunlight. Therefore construction issues were a key consideration during the design process. It was essential to analyse the way in which the structure would behave during construction. This enabled the Arup team to identify the right balance between efficiency and buildability.
Public facilities are located in a second building known as the Television Cultural Centre (TVCC). Both buildings are serviced from a single support building which houses major plant as well as site security. To provide a resilient yet efficient power supply to the buildings that form CCTV we designed an energy centre; independent power supplies; standby generators and an electrical network management system.
Arup’s engineering design on this complex project has defined a statuesque buiding located on a former brownfield site; rising magestically and adding to the distinctive Beijing skyline. Connecting directly into the neighbouring subway station for ease of access by public transport and making use of the citywide district heating system; CCTV treads as lightly as possible with respect to energy efficiency, for such a stunningly complex building in a hi-tech industry. Arup has established a new technological benchmark in building engineering.
Click here to return to the shortlist