The new headquarters of Chinese CCTV, ready for the London Olympic Games

With a total of 33 studios and a 405,000 m² facility, CCTV will be able to double its daily operation to produce up to 200 hours of daily programming.

After eight long years of work, the new headquarters of the Chinese state public television CCTV is ready for engineers and technicians to begin a race against time to equip a 405,000 m² facility.

The CCTV project was led by OMA/Rem Koolhaas, former OMA partner Ole Scheeren (until 2010), OMA partner David Gianotten and project director Dongmei Yao in close collaboration with partners Shohei Shigematsu, Ellen van Loon and Victor van der Chijs along with a hundred architects who have defied gravity with a peculiar building that has already become an emblem in China.

The foundation stone was laid on June 1, 2004, and the building's façade was completed in January 2008.
An adjacent building in the complex, the Television Cultural Center, was the victim of a fire on February 9, 2009, caused by fireworks on the day of the Lantern Festival, before the building's planned completion in May 2009. The fire in this building, which was to house the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a visitor center, a large public theater, two recording studios with three audio control rooms, a digital cinema room and two projection rooms, severely affected the main complex, delaying the project considerably.

The complex, located in the heart of the capital's financial district, will have 33 studios and is divided into six functional zones. With the new headquarters, CCTV will be able to double its daily operation to produce up to 200 hours of daily programming. This building will significantly expand the areas dedicated to other non-traditional distribution platforms such as IPTV and mobile TV.

With this project, CCTV has marked a new way of understanding skyscrapers with a curious “loop” design. Growing from a common platform, two towers lean towards each other and eventually join in a perpendicular direction, cantilevering 75 meters. The design itself combines the entire TV production process, until now dispersed in various places in the city, into a “loop” of interconnected activities.

The two tall 'L'-shaped towers join at the top and base at an angle to form a loop. CCTV tower will employ 10,000 people

The tallest tower will be 230 meters high and will house a series of horizontal and vertical sections with administration, news, broadcast, studios and production areas. The smaller building will be the future Television Cultural Center (TVCC).

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