This is pretty much an architectural cum eating itinerary and it doesn't cover TianAnMen or GuGong or Great Wall of China as we have done these in our previous visit to Beijing.
Day 01
9am: Breakfast at Hun Tun Hou 餛飩候, Guloudongdajie 鼓楼东大街
930am: Walk along Nanluoguxiang 南鑼鼓巷 for some early street shopping, try 文宇奶酪 and churros 吉事果 for snacks.
11am: 798 Art district, sightseeing and some artsy shopping here
1pm: Visit Sanlitun 三里屯 Village> Opposite house> Sanlitun SOHO.
optional: If you don't like shopping malls, you can visit Yaxiu Shopping Mall which sells the imitation goods which is within the vicinity.
2pm: Coffee break at cafe called Colibri.
3pm : Visit CCTV > Shangdu 尚都 SOHO > Chaowai 朝外 SOHO
5pm: Early Dinner at Ding Ding Xiang Hotpot (at Shangdu SOHO east tower)
6pm: Back at hotel to unload shopping and rest
8pm: Walk down Wangfujing > Wangfujing snack street > Donghuamen Night Market 東華門
Day 02
9am: Breakfast at 包子鋪 Gulongdajie 鼓龍大街.
10am: Visit National Theatre, fondly known as The Egg.
optional: Quickly dropby Silk Market if you want to buy imitation goods but we skipped this part since we are not interested. It's very near to The Egg.
11am: Walk down to Oriental Plaza 東方新天地. This is quite a walk.
12nn: Lunch at QuanJuDe 全聚德 for their famous Peking Duck。
2pm: Visit National Stadium (Bird Nest) 鸟巢 and Watercube 水立方 > Digital Beijing/ Matrix
4pm: Wudaokou Clothing Market where the local students shop.
8pm: Dinner at Wangfujing 狗不理包子
9pm: Donghuamen night Market to pack some supper back
Day 03
9am: Xidan 西单 Shopping Street for breakfast. Eat the local street snacks and more shopping.
optional: If you have time and want something different, visit Pan Jia Yuan market for antiques. Best to do this on a weekend.
12nn: YanDaiXiejie 烟袋斜街for souvenir shopping and a picturesque view of Houhai Lake. If you want can hitch a trishaw ride.
1pm: Lunch at XiaoBeiJing 小北鯨 for some piping hot dumplings. Beside this stall sells the very famous Beijing snack which always has a snaking queue...next to bus stop.Further down is another stall which sells cream puffs which is also a local hit. Always a long queue.
2pm: Walk around the 鼓楼 Drum Tower and 钟楼 Bell Tower.
3pm: Break time at Mr Shi's dumplings! 老石水餃 (because i have a dumpling craving!) if not you can opt for Yao Ji Chao Gan 姚記炒肝. Just beside Hun Tun Hou.
330pm: More street shopping and dropby i-tea for some cold drinks.
6pm: Dinner at DaDong Peking Duck.
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Beijing Day 02 - Bird Nest 鸟巢 Watercube 水立方 Matrix
Beijing National Stadium - Fondly known as the Bird's Nest 鸟巢
Herzog and DeMeuron
This is a feat of engineering, an aesthetic marvel, and an uber-green machine to boot. What we love most about the stadium’s design is its integration of a myriad complex systems all rolled into such an aesthetically and conceptually simple and stunning object. The Swiss Architects describe it best, saying, “The spatial effect of the stadium is novel and radical and yet simple and of an almost archaic immediacy. Its appearance is pure structure. Facade and structure are identical.”
Water Cube (National Aquatic Centre) 水立方
PTW Architects
The design concept of the “water cube” combines the symbolism of the architecture and the unique water bubble structure, and build an appropriate complement to the National Stadium.
The design of the Water Cube is based on the patterns of cells and soap bubbles. ETFE pillows create a bubble effect. The bubbles collect solar energy and help heat the swimming pools.
Designed for swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, and water-polo
Digital Beijing / Matrix
Studio Pei-Zhu
Digital Beijing, a nine-story, 1-million-square-foot building, rises solemnly just northwest of the effervescent Water Cube and the curvaceous Bird’s Nest. The building will serve as the control center for the Olympics; home base for technical and security teams; and hub for the routers, computers, and servers needed to run the Games in a digital age.
Inspired by computer circuitry, Zhu and Wu organized the building into four parallel slabs that recall a set of motherboards. The three western slabs, in fact, house electronic equipment, and the gaps between them provide ventilation for the machinery inside. Windowless elevations on the north and south protect the equipment from daylight. The easternmost slab serves essentially as an office building, accommodating people, not machines. From a distance, the building appears as a somber sentinel clad in gray granite.
But as you get closer, you notice the jazzy vertical ribbons of glass recessed in the west facade and the bands of glass set in the ground that act as horizontal continuations of the ribbons and light up at night. Most people enter the building on the east side—facing the Olympic venues—which Zhu and Wu conceived as the inverse of the west elevation. Here, glass replaces granite as the dominant material, and the zigzagging ribbons of glass have become vertical streams of LEDs.
Herzog and DeMeuron
This is a feat of engineering, an aesthetic marvel, and an uber-green machine to boot. What we love most about the stadium’s design is its integration of a myriad complex systems all rolled into such an aesthetically and conceptually simple and stunning object. The Swiss Architects describe it best, saying, “The spatial effect of the stadium is novel and radical and yet simple and of an almost archaic immediacy. Its appearance is pure structure. Facade and structure are identical.”
Water Cube (National Aquatic Centre) 水立方
PTW Architects
The design concept of the “water cube” combines the symbolism of the architecture and the unique water bubble structure, and build an appropriate complement to the National Stadium.
The design of the Water Cube is based on the patterns of cells and soap bubbles. ETFE pillows create a bubble effect. The bubbles collect solar energy and help heat the swimming pools.
Designed for swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, and water-polo
Digital Beijing / Matrix
Studio Pei-Zhu
Digital Beijing, a nine-story, 1-million-square-foot building, rises solemnly just northwest of the effervescent Water Cube and the curvaceous Bird’s Nest. The building will serve as the control center for the Olympics; home base for technical and security teams; and hub for the routers, computers, and servers needed to run the Games in a digital age.
Inspired by computer circuitry, Zhu and Wu organized the building into four parallel slabs that recall a set of motherboards. The three western slabs, in fact, house electronic equipment, and the gaps between them provide ventilation for the machinery inside. Windowless elevations on the north and south protect the equipment from daylight. The easternmost slab serves essentially as an office building, accommodating people, not machines. From a distance, the building appears as a somber sentinel clad in gray granite.
But as you get closer, you notice the jazzy vertical ribbons of glass recessed in the west facade and the bands of glass set in the ground that act as horizontal continuations of the ribbons and light up at night. Most people enter the building on the east side—facing the Olympic venues—which Zhu and Wu conceived as the inverse of the west elevation. Here, glass replaces granite as the dominant material, and the zigzagging ribbons of glass have become vertical streams of LEDs.
Beijing Day 02 - TianAnMen Square
i think there's pretty much of write up on the internet for TianAnMen Square which i shan't repeat here, so it's a been there done that item for the both of us.
Beijing Day 02 - National Centre aka The Egg 国家大剧院
The National Centre for the Performing Arts 国家大剧院; and colloquially described as The Bird's Egg, is an opera house.
The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu.
The exterior of the theater is a titatium ccented glass dome that is completely surrounded by a man-made lake. It is said to look like an egg floating on water, or a water drop. It was designed as an iconic feature, something that would be immediately recognizable.
guy selling candies outside The Egg.
The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu.
The exterior of the theater is a titatium ccented glass dome that is completely surrounded by a man-made lake. It is said to look like an egg floating on water, or a water drop. It was designed as an iconic feature, something that would be immediately recognizable.
The dome measures 212 meters in east-west direction, 144 meters in north-south direction, and is 46 meters high. The main entrance is at the north side. Guests arrive in the building after walking through a hallway that goes underneath the lake. The titanium shell is broken by a glass curtain in north-south direction that gradually widens from top to bottom.
guy selling candies outside The Egg.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Beijing Day 01 - Chaowai SOHO & Shangdu SOHO
CHAOWAI SOHOIROJE architects & planners
Chaowai SOHO has been designed to present an alternative to the typical model of Western transplant observed in neighbouring regions; it could not exist anywhere else, only in Beijing. Accordingly, it is very important to remember and reinterpret the identity of Beijing within the rapid change, which is almost menacing the traditional way of life in Beijing.
A number of concepts are established for this purpose. The first concept is the idea of ‘city within the city’. Its scenery of urban fabric in the building will greet its visitors and residents, bring back in them memories and incite new lives. The building itself is a small city; Little Beijing.
The second concerns the concept of a new building type. Analogous to natural topography, some parts are lifted up while others are lowered to form man-made nature, and the exterior shell is filled to define the inner void.
Third, the overall shape of the building is circular, like the Tulou; a type of vernacular architecture found in southern China. The solidity of the outer shell gives its inner space an atmosphere of introversion and strong solidarity, but also opens up vigorously to the external city. Fourth is a new analysis on the interior functions. They are not so clearly divided, but carefully organised with strategy which actively incorporates various forms of living and will secure the dynamism of life happening inside this small city.
Finally, the exterior material is grey stone; dark grey is the traditional color of Beijing. The details of this grey stone will accumulate memories with depth and density through the passage of time.
Lab Architecture's award winning design of the SOHO Shangdu in Beijing
Lab Architecture's award winning design of the SOHO Shangdu in BeijingThe project’s retail spaces deliberately creates activated street frontages and the internal retail areas were designed on the principle of a vertical hutong with a series of internal streets and passages which vary in their width and circulation patterns and in doing so create localised and specialist zones. Two large internal courtyards vertically link all the floors and provide an auditoria for a range of events from fashion parades, commercial launches to concerts and festival activities. The facetted facades of the two towers are clad in a random pattern of glass and aluminum panels and inscribed with a large scale geometrical network of lines which at night create continuous light lines that form a distinctive nocturnal image for the project. The facade pattern allowed the proportion of glass orientating to the south and west to be reduced and thus lowering the buildings heat gain.
Beijing Day 01 - CCTV Building
CCTV BeijingOMA
On the taxi cruising along the expressway,with the massive bridge looming directly ahead, the CCTV building can look dark and menacing.
From another angle the legs seem almost fragile. And from yet another the bridge’s tilted roof gives the building a strangely two-dimensional quality.
These distortions are reinforced by the structural system, an irregular network of steel cross-bracing that looks as if it were etched into the building’s skin. Because the cross-bracing becomes denser where the stresses are most severe — for example, where the bridge connects to the towers — at certain points the structure seems to be straining against all odds to stay up.
The forms are a reworking of classical perspective; the irregular structure is an attack on Modernist ideas about structural purity. Both are an effort to break down what Mr. Koolhaas, like a number of other architects of his generation, sees as the oppressiveness of the Cartesian order that has shaped architecture for centuries. The design is also striving to make room for the impurities and imperfections that make us human.
more photos of the CCTV whilst on the cab...
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