Weird Building in China--People's Daily

By Haoyang Li

People's Daily building is located in the East Third Ring Road in Beijing, involved international conference center, a library, newspaper building, etc. The first idea of building is circle. Cut by three curve on the outside to fit the site. The height of building is 150 meters. The design got processed in 2009, start to construction in Oct 2009 and finished in May 2014.

The idea is come from Zhou, Qi, and a professor from School of architecture Southeast University. The circle concept is from the traditional Chinese philosophy. Use the computer to support design the curve of exterior façade, and also fit the site well. Three curve joint together at the top to become a Chinese letter “人”, which mean “people” to follow the name of the building- People's Daily. Three curves are all concave surface that use curtain wall. The building is expected to be around five billion Yuan (804 million dollar)

Figure 1: Penis perspective.

 This building is first come into people’s mind is because of a particular perspective photo of its façade. View from this perspective, building is really like a penis. Everyone play jokes on it. Later on the designer clarify that after the building finally finished construction. "This is a coincidence between the angle and this particular stage of construction, I never thought the scaffolds on top of the building would last for so long," said architect Zhou Qi in a China Daily report. "Now combined with the sexual connotation and the newly launched iPhone 5S, it's totally understandable why people are so excited about it."

 

Figure 2 & 3 Rendering and model

After the designer show the concept rendering pictures, the building is not like a penis from the perspective. And in the processing phrase of construction, the exterior face of building is color gold, compare with the iPhone 5s gold version show up, people also laughed the color of building. But it is only the color of insulating layer. After the real exterior wall was completed, it is no longer gold.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLFziu5z2NI

Source:

Fig1: http://a4.att.hudong.com/23/23/01300000569933138163230095078.jpg, http://tupian.baike.com/a4_23_23_01300000569933138163230095078_jpg.html

Fig2: http://a2.att.hudong.com/45/63/01300000350394125238639759086.jpg, http://tupian.baike.com/s/%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E6%97%A5%E6%8A%A5%E6%96%B0%E5%A4%A7%E6%A5%BC/xgtupian/1/2?target=a2_45_63_01300000350394125238639759086.jpg

Fig3: http://a1.att.hudong.com/44/64/01300000350394125238644234151.jpg, http://tupian.baike.com/s/%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E6%97%A5%E6%8A%A5%E6%96%B0%E5%A4%A7%E6%A5%BC/xgtupian/1/0?target=a1_44_64_01300000350394125238644234151.jpg