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Monday, July 14, 2008

The Ren Building

This is the Ren Building, proposed to be built for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. I'm not sure if they have actually started building it. My guess is they have, and it's probably in the Pudong district where it will beat other iconic buildings such as the Jin Mao (where Grnd Hyatt is) and the Pearl Tower buildings. I'm told the skyline of Pudong changes every month or so with the completion of yet another futuristic building.

'Ren' means people in Chinese and the shape of the building is the Chinese character for people. I'm sure one day they can even build a building in the shape of the Chinese character for love, or any character they want. Structural engineers will have to stretch their innovative and creative limits to keep up with the architects.

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My only description: Cool!

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I was in Beijing 7 years ago and that's a city I want to visit again. The historic palaces and structures are simply awesome, and made me so proud of my Chinese roots. Now there's even more reason to visit Beijing, with several iconic buildings up for the Olympics. The most famous building is of course the 2008 Olympics Stadium, better known as the Bird's Nest. I'm told by an architect that despite the experts contributing to the fantastic design and structure, the building has a major 'flaw'. With all the twists and turns, it would be a huge challenge for TV crews to film the activities in the stadium because when the sun is overhead, there are shadows everywhere in the stadium. I suppose one way to overcome it is to not hold any event around mid day. Whatever the problems, I think most of us will be awed by the buildings in Beijing come 8.8.2008. I'm already counting down: 27 days to go!

7 comments:

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  2. what a coincidence! Chinchia and I went for an archi seminar by BIG architects (i love their stuff), and they're the architects of this building! funny thing is, this was originally a contest submission for a site in europe, which got turned down. then, a chinese guy stumbled upon it and loved it, saying how it looked like the chinese character for 'people', how it is the first character in the 'people's republic of china', and when u add another stroke on top of the character, it forms the word, 'BIG' (da)!

    check out more cool stuff at big.dk, love their work. so much clarity on their presentation. and the director graduated only 9 yrs ago from uni...plus, he's cute! :P

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  3. Amazing! BUt i would like to see Ai Building!

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  4. Wow...looks cool, wish to see more of these around here but doubt it...haha

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  5. That's one amazing building they are planning on... One thing is that the circles on the building kinda give me the goosebumps~ (kai ma pi) don't ask me why!!! I also dunno why I feeling so :S:S

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  6. must go to shanghai one of these days! that is the coolest building. is it visible looking at the shanghai skyline?

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  7. it looks like a variety of another building - Beijing Aqua Cube - a lots of bubbles squashing each other in a box. if so, i assumed that the bubbles should be more like the ones used in Casa Mila done by Anthony in Spain. all kinds of irregular closed shape around the building, including the windows, front door, even the roof top. will that be possible to get those bubbles to match the ones in sky? such as the three straight shining ones as the belt of Orion Constellation. do you think it will be an interesting idea ? even to match a portion of Milky Way. there are a lots of bubbles anyway, name it.

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