From the New World Trade Center to the China Central Television Headquarters: Place as a (Global) Node
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This chapter aims to reflect on the idea and concept of skyscrapers as an architectural type closely related to representations of economic and political power, tensions between local and global influences, and the overall impact of the creation of space and place. The correlation is made using two examples: the first is the new project for the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York in the United States, which was originally designed by Daniel Libeskind and redesigned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM); and the second is the China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters building in Beijing, China, which was completed in 2012 by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The correlation is made in light of the political and economic significance both skyscrapers have in terms of global markets – as the symbols of power of the Unites States and China, both equally influenced by mass media. This chapter investigates how the two existing places are transformed by these projects, along with the extensions of both places created by their global visibility and (online) accessibility – virtual space and place. Furthermore, it tracks the type of influence that the attention the WTC and the CCTV Headquarters have attracted can have on the creation of potentially different places – places as nodes of global visibility and importance. The WTC project is the re-creation of the location that simulates a sense of nostalgia, while the CCTV Headquarters is a powerful representation of China’s ‘bright’ future. By establishing the dualities in terms of two global markets and a place of nostalgia for the past against the place for the future, this chapter questions the impact that globalisation phenomena have on a creation of a place, aiming at alternative definitions of a place and exploration of its limits.