Created 1-May-11
Modified 20-Dec-23
A small series of views from the 80th floor of the tallest building in Beijing, the #3 tower of the Shangri-La owned China Trade Center. This tower, 330 tall, stands at the heart of Beijing's Central Business District (CBD) in the eastern part of the city. It overlooks on one side Rem Koolhaas' CCTV tower site, and is in close proximity to the so-called 12 Golden Lots of China's capital, so named because these just recently auctioned off building lots each brought a huge amount of revenue into the city's coffers, with one site alone bordering on a billion dollars it is said, just for the rights to build, not the land itself.
The tower itself is an interesting one actually. The glass paneling is bullet proof throughout, and - accounting for the events of 9/11 - some floors below the hotel (which occupies floors 64 to 81) are strictly reserved as evacuation spaces, with hazard gear and other emergency provisions stored here. They cannot be occupied or marketed in any other fashion.
All pictures taken with the Sony R1. Processing done in Lightroom using my own color formula to give this mostly nondescript urban expanse a bit of a sandbox and toy-like character.
Thomas H. Hahn
Ithaca/Beijing, April 2011
© Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images
