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The 300-square foot office, located in Chongqing city, consists of 40 layers of bottles that Li and his father laid out over four months. — Oddity Central
Although full-scale installations in architecture are gaining ground as a method of successfully exploring and testing out spatial, material, and interstitial concepts (see the recent "Bigger Than a Breadbox" competition) Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology graduate Li Rongjun's... View full entry
work stalled after concerns from regulators over the safety of the skyscraper and its environmental impact and funding.
With no progress on the project in sight, villagers nearby have started to raise fish in its 2.6-hectare water-filled foundations [...]
One villager started to raise fish in March and has invested over 20,000 yuan in his business. “I raise fish on the construction site. It is not in secret, neither have I ever been stopped”
— scmp.com
Construction on the would-be world's tallest building, known as Sky City in Changsha, China, began in 2013, under leadership of Broad Sustainable Building. Sky City made headlines not only for its proposed record-breaking height, but for the speed at which it was to be completed – Broad... View full entry
“The library is a tool to attract people to the village,” said Mr. Li, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
When visitors come to see the library, he said, they also spend money at the village’s few restaurants, pay parking fees and donate money for the building’s upkeep.
“The place is special,” said Li Wenli, 45, an insurance saleswoman from Beijing [...].
— nytimes.com
Call it a rural Bilbao Effect or not, we're still quite excited that Archinect was one of the very first outlets to publish Li Xiaodong's stunning Liyuan Library building: First spotted on the popular China Builds blog and then, in a little more detail, as a ShowCase installment in the Features... View full entry
In Beijing, Ai Weiwei is back with a vengeance. The dissident Chinese artist has had four solo shows in the Chinese capital, ending an implicit exhibition ban that had been in place since his arrest in 2011. The fact that the shows, which opened in June, were permitted with minimal interference beyond one amended opening date surprised everyone, including Ai. “I never planned to have a few shows all at once,” Ai tells us. — The Art Newspaper
Related:Ai Weiwei, Jacob Appelbaum and the dissident experienceArt? An interview with Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei Exhibition Underscores Dangers and Importance of Art View full entry
Citing a recent report from the Great Wall of China Society, the [Beijing Times] claims that more than 30% of the original structure has disappeared. Approximately 74.1% is poorly preserved, and only 8.2% is in good condition. While concerns about the wall’s condition have deepened in recent years, the study appears to be the first to actually quantify the problem. — Hyperallergic
More on Archinect:Paul Rudolph's Government Center won't be saved, despite preservationist pleasU.S. LGBTQ preservation group pushes to preserve more heritage sites at the national levelNew list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places keeps fragile memories alive View full entry
New satellite imagery of remote islands in the South China Sea shows several Chinese island-building projects are finished. In five of seven island projects, attention has turned to the next phase: building bases with potential military uses on the islands. — washingtonpost.com
Taking a cue from the Gulf states, China has been engaged in a massive island-building project in the South China Sea. New images from the Washington Post show the staggering progress that is being made, with the first buildings cropping up. While relatively small, the South China Sea is one of... View full entry
He has a vision of a future where his company makes a third of the world's buildings – all modular, all steel, and all green.
“The biggest problem we face in the world right now isn't terrorism or world war. It's climate change,” he says.
— bbc.co.uk
A fascinating profile of Zhang Yue, the man behind Mini Sky City, a 57-story tower built in 19 days. Yue's company, the Broad Sustainable Group, was able to construct at such speeds by assembling prefab parts at the rate of 3-storeys a day. Now, Yue's set his sights on on building the full-size... View full entry
The boom in China stock prices that has created more than 100 new billionaires and billionaire families in the past month is continuing this week. [...]
Tu Shanzhong, chairman of Pubang Landscape Architecture, became China’s newest landscape architecture billionaire after shares in his 31%-owned Pubang Landscape Artchitecture closed at a record high of 38.53 yuan [...]. Our estimate of his fortune, at $1 billion on Wednesday, includes discounts for collateralized shares and includes dividends.
— forbes.com
The 260-meter long, 100-meter wide, six-floor building was built by Hong Kong-listed Chinese online game developer NetDragon Websoft, whose founder Liu Dejian — a 43-year-old University of Kansas alumni — is a huge [Trekkie]...With a total investment of 600 million yuan ($97 million), the building was inspired by the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, which appeared in three “Star Trek” movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. — The Wall Street Journal
Sources report that construction of the office building started in October 2010 and was then completed in May 2014.Check out the building on Google Maps or in the drone footage below. View full entry
Zhangjiajie, a scenic national park in the country's Hunan province, is set to open the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge in July.
Spanning two cliffs in the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon area, it will stretch 430 meters (1,410 feet) long and 6 meters (20 feet) wide, hovering over a 300-meter (984-foot) vertical drop.
In comparison, the Grand Canyon Skywalk in the United States is 21 meters (69 feet) in length and stands 219 meters (718 feet) above the canyon floor.
— cnn.com
UPDATE: World's longest and highest glass bridge opens in China View full entry
A sinkhole more than 317 yards deep in Xuanen has become home for various plants and animals — Wall Street Journal
OMA returns to Venice once again in the debut of the Chinese Pavilion they designed for the 2015 International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, "All the World's Futures", which opened to the public on May 9. Commissioned by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, the multimedia exhibition... View full entry
Archeologists have unearthed a massive tomb complex in a southwest suburb in Beijing, according to the Beijing Institute of Cultural Heritage on Monday.
They said the complex is a rare discovery given its size, time span and location.
The 70 hectare archeological site consists of 129 tombs built over 1,100 years, spanning from the East Han Dynasty (25-220) to Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Liao (907-1125).
— chinadaily.com.cn
A Chinese construction company is claiming to be the world’s fastest builder after erecting a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 working days in central China.
Broad Sustainable Building, a prefab construction firm, put up the rectangular, glass and steel Mini Sky City in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha, assembling three floors a day using a modular method [...].
The company now has ambitions to assemble the world’s tallest skyscraper, at 220 floors, in only three months.
— The Guardian
[The Great Cannon] allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit. The system was used, they said, to intercept web and advertising traffic intended for Baidu — China’s biggest search engine company — and fire it at GitHub, a popular site for programmers, and GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that runs mirror images of sites that are blocked inside China. — NY Times
