Architectural thinker, designer of the CCTV Headquarters
A Dutch architect and theorist, one of the most intellectually influential figures in contemporary architecture. A journalist by origin, he always practiced architecture as a way of thinking about and critiquing the modern city, society, and capital. His books Delirious New York and S,M,L,XL deeply shaped generations of architects. His works often break convention and are full of intellectual provocation; the most famous is the headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing — a huge cantilevered loop, overturning the skyscraper’s habit of merely rising. His firm OMA is a training academy for contemporary architects; Zaha Hadid, Bjarke Ingels, and a raft of later masters came from it. He proved that architecture is, above all, a form of thought.
Nearly every skyscraper competes to be taller, growing only upward. Koolhaas’s CCTV Tower does the opposite: two towers bend and join at top and bottom, twisting into a huge cantilevered loop, forming a continuous circuit. It challenges not only the limit of structure but the deep-rooted notion that "a skyscraper should soar straight up." What he asks is: why must a tower be that way?
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.