The space-age face of new Shanghai.
Wings, by Foster
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
It is quite unique, at least on Eikongraphia, to have
an architecture rendering that feature both the building
and its iconography. This is the case with two renderings
of the Beijing Airport that Foster + Partners designed,
already in 2003. The iconography itself – the wings of an
airplane – is not that remarkable, as most airports nowadays
seem to echo the high-tech aerodynamic forms of airplanes.
To feature the building and its iconography in a single image
just illustrates how contextually motivated this iconography is.
Architecture this way becomes almost an act of camouflaging,
the architect a chameleon.
We have seen numerous contextual projects pass by here on
Eikongraphia, such as a bridge next to a bridge in Queens, waves
at the waterfront of Yokohama, and sails in the background of boats
entering the harbor of Sydney.
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
According to the architects themselves the design of Beijing Airport
refers also to a dragon, a traditional Chinese symbol. In their minimalist
language: “A symbol of place, its soaring aerodynamic roof and
dragon-like form will celebrate the thrill of flight and evoke traditional
Chinese colours and symbols.”
The dragon-iconography has to do with the paint of the interior that
changes from yellow to red as you move to your plane. Without
more recognizable dragon-forms, one cannot really experience
this iconography.
But maybe we have to think in the direction of the east-facing
roof lights “which maximise heat gain from the early morning sun,”
just as the small ‘sails’ of the Law courts in Antwerp, designed
by Richard Rogers, reminded even architecture critics more of the
dragons-teeth or dragon-knobs.
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
Interesting are also the other designs that were made back in
2003 and that are documented on a China government website.
Browsing through the other projects it struck me that the design by
Foster is by far the most ‘minimal’ in its form. Where others proposed
modules, Foster designed – what appears to be – a single form.
And where others designed different forms after one another,
the design by Foster is symmetrical.
The American blob-architect Gregg Lynn argued with his entry
for the Cardiff Opera House competition that in biology symmetry
is an effect of a lack of parameters. Symmetry is in that way more
‘primitive’ or ‘minimal’ than asymmetry, because you need
parameters to describe an asymmetrical form.
Beijing Airport is, remarkably, symmetrical along two axes.
An airplane, to name just one other object, is only symmetrical
along one axis. This double symmetry says ‘order’,
the real virtue an airport strives for. It’s a super-smart
representation. Mind-blowing.
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
The project will be finished next year, in 2008, just in time for the
Olympics.
Foster + Partners - Beijing Airport
This is the front page of Zhejiang newspaper Today Morning Express. The caption of the Hangzhou boats photo read: Heavy rain hits Hangzhou; hundreds of boats return.
30 years on, photos of Tangshan Earthquake, which killed 240,000 people (if you believe the 
