That weird, shiny, spaceship-like gob of postmodernity on Second Ring Road is officially alive. “Busses full of local students mingled with other architecture fanatics to get a first official glimpse of the cities newest archi-gem” last Saturday, reports the architect website Archinet.
At the opening event, Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, who designed this perfect landing pad for our future slavers, whether they be aliens or sentient robots, was feted in the eye of a throng. You can barely see her in the above photo via ArtHitectural, but she’s seated in the middle table, surrounded, suffocated by her own creation while trying to rise above it. Symbolism? Hubris before the fall? Possibly it all depends. Let us see, in a few months time, whether this many people ever return to the complex.
The Atlantic Cities calls Galaxy SOHO “Watergate on steroids.” What do you think? There are more pictures after the jump, plus a promotional video created by Stephy Chung for London-based Crane.tv.
Uh… but what’s it for?
What every SOHO is for, of course: small office, home office.
Though you’d think there’d be a saturation point for SOHOs, and that they’d reached it already.
Seems like the locals, if the guy in the video is anything to go by, are clearly into it. cool video BTW. But Hadid saying that it’s inspired by a courtyard? Really? -Why does every western architect working in China feel the need to compare their building – no matter how abstract – to a traditional Chinese courtyard?? -It’s not “inspired” by a hutong, merely replacing it. So fraudulent.
American suburb: A place where the developer cuts down all of the trees and replaces them with streets named after the trees.
Beijing Galaxy SOHO: A place the developer tears down all of the hutong courtyards and replaces them with an abstract hutong-inspired courtyard.
Looks alot like the SFU campus in Vancouver, that opened years ago…hmm….
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