Contemporary architecture in Beijing

In this post I'd like to share photos of the contemporary buildings that we saw over the last two days across the city.

Starting with the impressive Beijing Urban Planning Museum.

Ever since it opened this museum has become the starting point for all architects/city planners who visit this city.

Zooming in on the new CBD of Beijing

The CCTV HQ designed by OMA, sadly this buildings isn't really open to the public! Would have been interesting to see if there more to it that its wacky outer form. 

The main stadium of the 2008 Beijing Olympics - popularly known as the Bird's nest - is one of most known icons of the 21st century. It was designed by Swiss firm Herzog de Meuron in collaboration with artist Ai WeiWei.

It is a befitting design for the larger than life event that was the Olympics.

The transition spaces between the large Olympic park and the actual games arena is very interesting.

View of the different stadiums from the Olympic park

The Watercube designed by PTW architects is too kitsch for my liking and lack are architectural merit from the inside.

Here's a snap from inside the cube .

Digital Beijing at the edge of the Olympic park designed by Studio Pei-Zhu

The Linked hybrid designed by Steven Holl

Although this is one of Holl's most celebrated projects, I think he really struggles to do anything meaningful at these large scale projects!

There are some interesting ideas here but the overall project is not as interesting as the concept.

Some new office towers

And I end this post with this photo of the Sanlitun Village designed by the Oval Partnership. This is a very interesting shopping complex that takes inspiration from the scale and relationship seen in the traditional Hutongs of Beijing.