Keep Beijing ‘weird’?

Keep Beijing ‘weird’?

After three decades of being the “it” city for the world’s most daring architects, and shunting Communist uniformity to the wind, Beijing’s boom of incredibly imaginative architecture could be coming to a close. 

A recent edict by President Xi Jinping called a halt to “weird architecture.” Now, city planners, builders, and architects are scrambling to figure out what that means. One building wearing the “weird” stigma, now under construction, emulates the mountains in a classical Chinese landscape painting.  —Diane Richard, writer, Dec. 23

Image: An artist’s rendition of the Chaoyang Park Plaza development, left, which developers have warned may be the last oddly shaped buildings constructed in Beijing for some time. Credit Courtesy of MAD Architects

Source: Cao Li, “Under Xi, China’s Wave of ‘Weird Architecture’ May Have Peaked,” New York Times, December 19, 2014