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Rem Koolhaas Beijing disaster...

Today's Times reports Rem Koolhaas' hotel and cultural complex in China is aflame.

Fire Engulfs Beijing Hotel Complex

BEIJING — A fierce fire engulfed one of the Chinese capital’s most architecturally celebrated modern buildings on Monday, the last day of festivities for the lunar new year when the city was ablaze with fireworks.

By late evening the blaze was still raging and the cause remained unknown, but it seemed clear that the 34-story structure, not yet completed, had been rendered unusable.

The building, a luxury hotel and cultural complex designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, is part of China Central Television’s new headquarters, an angular two-legged behemoth built to coincide with the Beijing Olympics last year.

Firefighters, their ladders only reaching up a dozen or so floors, could do little to contain the blaze, a spectacular wall of flames eerily reflected in the glass skin of the adjacent CCTV tower.

The CCTV complex was a hugely expensive trophy of the pre-Olympics building boom, the result of many billions of dollars that the ruling Communist Party had devoted to making Beijing a city of the future. The main CCTV tower appeared untouched by the fire.

The 241-room Mandarin Oriental hotel, which had been due to open this summer, was unoccupied at the time, hotel executives said.

According to Chinese television, the fire began at 8:27 p.m., although witnesses said they spotted flames as early as 7:45 p.m. Within 20 minutes, they said, the fire had spread from the lower floors to the building’s crown. Black smoke drifted across the night sky, obliterating a full moon.

The authorities blocked off a thoroughfare known as the Third Ring Road, which runs adjacent to the complex. Subway cars running underneath the site were briefly halted, stranding thousands of passengers. Frantic police officers tried to shoo away huge crowds as sirens wailed and fireworks lit up the skyline. People watching noted that the timing of the fire — coming at the end of the spring festival — was inauspicious.

While errant fireworks were suspected as a possible cause, fires of such magnitude are nonetheless highly unusual in Beijing.

The city had been crackling with fireworks for the annual Lantern Festival, the final day of the two-week long Chinese New Year holiday.

Witnesses said that construction crews had been working nonstop on the building but it was not immediately clear if anyone was injured.

Claire Sandner, a spokeswoman for Mandarin Oriental, said none of the hotel’s 60 employees were inside at the time of the fire. She said it was too early to assess the extent of the damage although the devastation appeared to be complete.

A spokesman for Mr. Koolhaas’s firm in Rotterdam, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, called the fire “a great tragedy.” The spokesman, Stefan Petermann, said the firm had won the competition for the building in 2002; groundbreaking took place in 2004, and the building was due to be completed this May.

As they stood gaping at the blaze, many people said the fire would be widely interpreted as a poor omen for the coming year. Fan Wenxin, 20, a waiter who works a few blocks from the complex, rattled off a litany of disasters that have shaken China in recent months.

Although the past year included a triumphal Olympics, he said there had also been a spate of ominous events, among them the Sichuan earthquake, the riots in Tibet and a drought that has left Beijing and much of northern China without precipitation for more than three months. “This does not bode well for the new year,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/wo...eijing.html?hp

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There is also a video here. Quite incredible:
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-210127

(please note reader comments below the video about melted steel and 9/11. Fascinating.
If anyone wants to open up a thread about the subject here, let me know.)

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I just checked this out earlier today. I cant state clearly enough it is NOT the main CCTV building the arch/cantilever/building with a hole in it or however you would describe it. The building aflame is the single hotel tower part of the complex.

There have been a number of skyscraper fires, I've never seen any like this fully engulf the entire building in such an explosive manner. I wonder if it has to do with it being underconstruction, perhaps the sprinkler system wasn't finished or wasn't turned on. Id be interested to see a picture of the building after the fire.

I read earlier the sprinkler system wasnt active. The building also has a massive atrium which would help the fire spread to other floors. I cant help but cringe at the loss of investment here, knowing how long it takes to construct these buildings. How do they go about salvaging this?

That was an absolutely stunning design, it really is unfortunate. But atleast noone died. As far as the investment I'm sure the developer had hazard insurance or they never would have received financing to build it in the first place.

If one were to crop a section of the metallic facade it looks eerily similar to the facade of the former WTC.

I wouldn't call that building stunning.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/...b8ec6e193b.jpg
The total cost for this and the CCTV tower next door (both by Koohass) is 714 million dollars. Compare this to Zeckendorf's Eighth Avenue box that would have cost 900 million dollars.

That fire photo is unbelievable. The heat alone must have caused damage to much that surrounds it.

Quote:

I wouldn't call that building stunning.

OK, maybe not stunning, but it was hot.

ok basically...

the building was:

1. designed like a chimney (Koolhaas in trouble), and was
2. set alight by illegal fireworks (Hunan Fireworks in trouble)
3. that CCTV overrode local police attempts to stop (CCTV in trouble),
4. that the contractor failed to hose down while the fireworks were going off - unlike all the other buildings in the area with different contractors (Beijing Urban Construction Group in trouble),
5. and that was fueled by zinc in the cladding (engineering firm Arup Associates, and their fireproofing record in trouble).

The insurance company and lawyers are going to have a field day.

Daylight aftermath photos here.

Quote:

http://images.dayoo.com/china/attach...0afa9aef2b.jpg

My God, looks like some scene from deep within the caves of Mordor.

From BBC:

Investigators have blamed China's state TV for a huge fire that destroyed a hotel in Beijing, saying fire-crackers it illegally set off caused the blaze.

A firefighter died after inhaling toxic fumes and six people were injured in the fire at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel that raged for more than five hours.

China Central Television (CCTV) staged the fireworks display nearby to mark the end of Lunar New Year celebrations.

The hotel, which is under construction, was empty when the fire broke out.

The 44-storey building is located just a few hundred metres from CCTV's iconic headquarters - designed as part of the city's Olympic makeover.

The flagship Mandarin Oriental Hotel was nearly completed

The complex cost 5bn yuan ($731m; £495m), according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The authorities said the broadcaster had gone against police warnings and set off fireworks in the complex that were far more powerful than those allowed for public use.

Police are questioning those in charge of the display, Xinhua quoted Beijing fire spokesman Luo Yuan as saying.

The blaze, which was filmed by CCTV, drew onlookers from across China's capital, as clouds of sparks and smoke spurted from the tower.

Fireworks were set off across Beijing on Monday night to celebrate the first full moon since the Lunar New Year.