CCTV New Headquarters to be completed for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, will be among the first of 300 towers to be constructed in Beijing's
new Central Business District.

The project, covering an area of 400,000 square meters, was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas,
and will include three major buildings: the main building, the television culture center and the energy
service center. It combines administration with news, broadcasting, studios and program production - the
entire process of TV making - in a sequence of interconnected activities.

The main building has a nine-storey base, three-storey basement, two leaning towers that slope at 6° in
each direction, and a nine- to 13-storey “Overhang”, which is suspended 36 stores in the air. The leaning
towers and the interconnecting section created a real challenge in engineering terms and required an
innovative approach to make the uniquely-shaped building possible. The building forms an asymmetrical
arch, through which will be seen the adjacent Television Cultural Centre (TVCC). Together these two
buildings will form the focal point of Beijing’s new Central Business District (CBD).

It was designed to challenge the seemingly banal and never-ending race to be the tallest, and to come up
with a landmark structure that didn’t just have height, but also had longevity in terms of an iconic shape
and structure. The irregular grid on the building's facades is an expression of the forces traveling throughout its structure.

The second building, the 115,000 m2 Television Cultural Center (TVCC) includes a hotel, a visitor's
center, a large public theatre and exhibition spaces. It is visible from the main intersection of the
Central Business District through the "window" of the CCTV headquarters.

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.

The variable space and the continual loop structure make the building ideal for creating the desired
interconnected sequence of activity, and provide a fitting new home for CCTV.