New Headquarters of The People's Daily
The recent design competition for the new People’s Daily building went through several rounds of appraisal, in the end it was the plan of Professor Zhou Qijiao of the Southeast University School of Architecture that won the final bid.
The bid proposal’s design philosophy revolve around the moral philosophy of “Round sky and square earth”, by using a computer model the building start off round and gradually turn into a 3D two-sided shape, and forms a parallel with the rectangular base. Finally the top of the building form a triangular word “人” [People], associated with the theme of the People’s Daily. The round lead-in also fulfills the requirement of the central location of the project.
The three corner of the building bulge out into massive steel pillars all the way to converge at the top, while the three sides of the glass walls are concave surfaces. The entire design is clean and simple, moreover it saves on building costs.
Southeast University School of Architecture depended on this plan to win the competition between 4 other architecture firms (China Architecture Design & Research Group, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, Central-South Architectural Design Institute, and Zhongye Design Institute); this is also the first time in 50 years that this firm won a design project at the national-level agency in Beijing.
The new building of People’s Daily falls within the 3rd ring road in Beijing, inside the central area of the Beijing Central Business District (CBD), and in alignment with the newly completed CCTV building. The scale of the whole construction reaches over 100 thousand square meters, made up of the International Conference Center, Library, Publishing Building, etc. Among them the height of the tower is over 150 meters. This is the largest construction project since the founding of the People’s Daily, and it will receive widespread attention.
