CCTV Headquarters Beijing

Architecture Skyscrapers: CCTV Headquarters Beijing. The CCTV Headquarters is a 234 m (768 ft), 44-storey skyscraper in the Beijing Central Business District (CBD) and serves as headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV). Groundbreaking took place on 1 June 2004 and the building's facade was completed in 1 January 2008. Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of OMA were the architects in charge for the building, while Arup provided the complex engineering design.

The main building is not a traditional tower, but a loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 473,000 m (1,552,000 ft) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building's facade with an open center. The building was built in three buildings that were joined to become one and a half buildings 30 May 2007. The CCTV building was part of a media park intended to form a landscape of public entertainment, outdoor filming areas, and production studios as an extension of the central green axis of the CBD.

Administration, news, broadcasting, and program production offices and studios are all contained inside.

CCTV Headquarters was officially opened by the President on 1 January 2008. An adjacent building in the complex, the Television Cultural Center, caught on fire, ignited by fireworks on Lantern Festival day, 9 February 2009, before the building's scheduled completion in May 2009. It was to have the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a visitor's center, a large public theatre, two recording studios with three audio control rooms, a digital cinema and two screening rooms. As of 9 February 2010, the main CCTV tower was still unoccupied. In September and October on two notable occasions the entire tower complex was alight at least from one of the towers. The Television Cultural Center will be repaired.