Architect Antony Wood on skyscraper boom in China

Global Business

While skyscrapers are on the rise Creative or weird architecture is on the decline. New guidelines on urban planning will forbid the construction of bizarre, over sized and odd-shaped buildings, and China does have many of those.

CCTV America’s Michelle Makori spoke to Antony Wood out of Chicago to discuss China’s skyline. He’s the Executive Director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the organization behind the skyscraper study we cited.

Guangzhou Circle office building with 150 foot hole in the middle or this convention center looks like a clay tea pot, and our very own CCTV headquarters in Beijing affectionately known as the big pants building.

China’s construction boom over the past 2 decades or so has lured some of the world’s top architects and resulted in some of the most unique and original constructions. The country has been dubbed an architect’s playground.

But now the government wants buildings that are more “sustainable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.”
This follows President Xi Jinping’s criticism of weird architecture in 2014, when he called for less ostentatious buildings.