The CCTV building may well feel familiar. Long an eye-catching presence on Beijing’s skyline, it broke ground back in 2004. Still, that hardly makes its completion—in May, after eight years and one devastating fire—any less significant. Designed by architecture firm OMA under the direction of Rem Koolhaas and former partner Ole Scheeren, the 52-story edifice has turned any conventional notion of the skyscraper on its side, rising in two tilting towers that angle to meet midair in a cantilevered embrace. At play is a complex structural system, articulated by a web of steel cross-braces, dense or sparse, as needed. Having welcomed its namesake tenant, China Central Television, this summer, the building can now stand proud as a feat of 21st-century ingenuity.
Related: See a dozen other groundbreaking buildings opening this year.
