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The idea was to make the building inside out.
With all the structure on the outside, so it became a simple thing.
The density of the structure influences how you look outside..
But also how you look to the inside.
The structure becomes denser in the middle, exactly where it needs more strength...
and more open at the bottom and the top, creating a natural entrance.
And you get a natural feeling, for instance when you go up in the elevator...
it becomes more dense and then more open,
so you get a feeling the trip is accompanied in an architectural way.
When we started all these buildings weren't there.
Strip by strip they offered it for competition.
That's Zaha's new opera house...
I don't really like the narrative architecture with some story.
I believe it is the other way around...
you make something and then...
because some people can't think in architecture and can't read it...
they need some story, to get it explained...
so they can say "oh yes, I can explain this to my friends"...
So it becomes reasonable for them at once.
That has to do with getting used to it, when something is new you have to get used to it.
You have to be comforted that it's good.
I have some Chinese students in London, they came over to help us.
They can tell more about context and about how Chinese approach something like this.
At some point Chinese student Patty wrote a story about it in a Chinese way.
It has nothing to do with architecture, it is a kind of fairy-tale.
But this is how the Chinese language works, the characters are all associations...
You have to trigger the right association, so people can put it in a certain context.
It’s a landmark of Guangzhou.
The official name is Guangzhou tower, but people here call it “Beautiful slim waist”.
She's a beauty.
Bits of the context are in the design...
that the rotation of the top and bottom is related to the directions of the city.
The top rotated in the direction of the Pearl river delta, the direction of Hong Kong...
North-West to South-East,
The other is in the direction of the city, the new French axis they build now.
For the competition we turned it in a certain direction...
But I couldn't rsist to turn it the other way when we had won the competition.
So in the end it has nothing to do with it.
But after working on it for a while you just want to see how it looks in another way.
So there is not much left from the stories.
In the end, what you get is just what you see around you.
There are glass boxes outside the structure so you can step outside...
and can look down into the structure.
You can see here that it looks more like a plant than a building.
You can see the columns shoot from one side of the building to the other.
They start on one side and finish on the other.
It creates some kind of surface that filters sunlight.
So the architecture becomes more of a unity...
Instead of arranging everything separately we try to make the facade with the structure..
And the sun filter at the same time.
Our clever trick is that we make designs so somplicated they can't be changed.
The base idea is complicated, so everyone has to follow that idea.
It's in the concept, you can't change it anymore.
Even the little glass boxes were difficult to place...
because the structure gets denser, and only on this place it is possible.
So if they had different ideas, the municipality came with ideas to make a column...
they had been to America and had been to the Grand Canyon, with the skywalk...
they wanted that same glass thing here on the tower.
They give you such an option, but in the end they don't do it.
If you say it is a shame to make such a landscape first and then ruin it with another idea.
But it is actually impossible because there is no place for it. It's not logical.
It’s the landmark of Guangzhou.
It’s magnificent and well built...
very modern and international. There are two rotating restaurants.
The difficulty was to get them in an elliptical tower.
So here you come closer to the facade, and then move to the piano.
We thought it was fun to make use of the unique odd shape.
Not just the standard focus on the view.
Also because most part of the year there is no view, it is like this,..
A bit hazy. The atmosphere is more important.
Because food is so important in here, and doing business during dinners...
This is a popular spot for business people to receive their clients..
I think Rotterdam would never build this.
I don't believe China is a playground for architects.
But everything happens here. People are open to things...
They are looking for how to express their own identity.
That's where architecture is interesting, where it expresses temporary culture.
They are looking for it, and you want to give it, so it comes together by coincidence.
We tried it all over the world, but often the ideas don't get accepted.
Because they don't have anything with it . They see it as 'too complex' of 'too new'...
'too different'.. they think it doesn't fit.
On that part of the world they are too busy with keeping what they've got, and fit it in.
But here people just ask "what do we want to be"...
"what does China want to become, what is the future"...
I think it is more of a match...
The Chinese themselves also don't fully understand I think...
they are very much searching for what they should become, their identity.
Maybe because they listened too much to Western kitsch...
they think that it has to come from your history.
But in fact, the thing that is the most new now,
that is what architecture is at this moment.
This is all o.k., but what you're about to see is an addition...
that has been put on top by the client.
It looks like it can be taken off easily...
I suggested a few times that as soon as they recovered their money..
They should remove it.
The idea was to make this whole deck just this staircase.
We built it with a special safety zone, a suicide jumping zone...
so you can't fall too deep and don't need a huge barrier.
This would be the place to feel the wind in your hair and look over the whole city.
This is the most important concession to Chinese culture.
They don't understand, and don't want to understand.
The most important thing is selling tickets which is easy with these bubbles on top...
you can charge everyone separately. So now they block the view.
At the same time it is fun for families and kids to have something to do.
In the evenings it is used a lot.
They made it more difficult, because all top floors have been re-numbered.
Officially there are only 88 floors in the whole tower.
But the public doesn't understand that buildings are lower in Shangai...
but with higher floor numbers.
So they had a problem, and they changed the floor numbers, now there is 108 and 109..
But there are no 109 floors. In the elevator they still have the original buttons.
This is the staircase from 170 metres to 350...
you can walk through the waist of the building.
We thought they would let you walk down, but they are very sporty...
you have to walk from the botton upwards.
I think that is fun, you really climb the tower.
This is a way to get near the structure and to touch it.
You can see the protruding boxes on the top.
We are here for a while now, I teach on a few universities.
And Barbara teaches too, so that helps to get contacts.
The reason we went to China is to keep on moving...
When it's not going well in Europe we look if there are opportunities for us here.
And we have something here now, so we can try it.
What you see on the tower now is not really designed...
I think it is a play thing from the city's leaders.
I proposed different things...
It is difficult, it is like a computer, you can do anything with it.
And then you have to restrict yourself in order not to do everything.
This is a phase they have to get through, mess everything up and try it all...
Maybe in 15 years time they decide you need a designer for that.
And to let some artist do it who can make makes something nice out of it.