StructureHub

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel - which flamed up with disturbing speed and intensity when CCTV workers had a bit of unlicensed fun with fireworks while celebrating the Chinese New Year - is getting a second chance.  Apparently the structure’s steel skeleton is largely sound and perfectly capable of acting as an ever-present reminder to CCTV higher-ups of one more reason that the Chinese populace hates its so much.

The intriguing development reported in the article however is that the hotel tower is only partly salvageable.  OMA’s on-site project architect, Ole Scheeren, hinted as much in saying there would be a “repair effort but not a complete re-building.”

So what does that mean?  The dominant conceit of the hotel’s form is the angled facade that forms a continuous skin wrapping from one side of the tower, over the top, and down the opposite side.  I suspect that if the hotel is not completely re-built, it would naturally be shrunk one way or another, which would unavoidably cleave the tower’s primary identifying  feature in two by cutting away the top midsection.  Is the re-building effort no longer focused on salvaging the tower’s architectural statement - and instead merely concerned with making it habitable?

I wouldn’t be surprise in the least if the latter is true.  The fallout from the February fire included many arrests and dismissals at CCTV, which suggests that it would like nothing more than to get this whole mess over with as soon as possible.  Moreover, it was always a secondary element of the development in which it stands.  Rem Koolhaas is lucky the icon he designed next door to the hotel was spared from the flames - I doubt a salvage effort of that tower would yield anything as powerful as the original vision.

Related Post:  Another one bites the dust - Hadid’s Opera House engulfed in flames.

Image courtesy of thebigdurian.