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The CCTV Headquarters is a skyscraper that is currently under construction in Beijing. The building will be the new headquarters of China Central Television. Groundbreaking took place on September 22, 2004. The building will be completed in December 2008. Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of OMA are the architects for the building, while Arup provides the complex engineering design. The building will stand at 234 metres (768 ft) tall and will have 51 floors.[1]The main building is not a traditional tower, but a continuous loop of five horizontal and vertical sections covering 4,100,000 square feet (381,000 m2) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building’s facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone. Because of its radical shape, it has acquired the nickname dà kùchā (大裤叉)[2], translated into English as "Big Underpants"[3] or "Big Shorts".[4]
A second building, the Television Cultural Centre, includes a hotel, a visitor's centre, a large public theatre, and exhibition spaces. It is visible from the main intersection of the new Beijing Central Business District through the window of the main CCTV headquarters building. A media park forms a landscape of public entertainment, outdoor filming areas, and production studios as an extension of the central green axis of the CBD.[5] The Mandarin Oriental Hotel will be part of the complex.[citation needed]
The building was built in two sections that were joined to complete the loop on December 26, 2007. In order not to lock in structural differentials this connection was planned to be completed at the coldest time of night when the steel in the two towers cooled to the same temperature. .[6]
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