Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower
By admin on 2015-03-04

Attraction Type:

• Modern Architectures in China

New Guangzhou TV Tower in China, with a height of 618 meters, ranks as the highest tower in China and the highest TV Tower in the world. Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower, also known as Canton Tower, is located near Chigang Pagoda in Haizhu District Guangzhou China. This tower was finished in October 2010. It offers a platform for the public to have a bird's view of Guangzhou City. People can get the observation floors on floor 107 and 108.

Information Based Architecture (IBA) and Arup worked collaboratively to win the commission for the design of the new TV Tower for the City of Guangzhou, which was the host city for the 2010 Asian Games. 
 

Designing Competition

The international competition was held in 2004 for the design of the tower, a 17.9ha park at its base and the master-plan for the surrounding 56.6ha which includes an elevated Plaza, pagoda-park, retail facilities, offices, television centre and hotel.
 

Characters

The longest aerial ladder: the ladder is set on a height of 160 meters surrounded the tower with more then 1,000 footsteps.

The highest revolving restaurant: on the 424 meters with more than 400 seats and serve both Chinese and western cuisine

The highest outdoor sightseeing platform: with a height of 450 meters and the area of 2,160 square meters

The highest lateral observation wheel: enjoy Guangzhou City landscape in a height of 450 meters.

Mixed the architectural art with the modern science, Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower integrates the functions of broadcast, sightseeing, entertainment and leisure into one as a new landmark of Guangzhou City.

Charming Canton Tower

The gender

In our impression, most skyscrapers are featured man's characters such as strong and straight. But Canton TV Tower may be a female tower with its charming appearance. Designers describe it with words transparent, curvy and gracious. Their aim was to design a free-form tower with a rich and human-like identity that would represent Guangzhou as a dynamic and exciting city. They therefore wanted it to be non-symmetrical so that the building would look as if ‘in movement’ and "alive". The result is a tower like a "sexy female", the very reason that earned her the nickname: "super-model".
 

The twist

Why it is a female tower can be traced from its twist. Although it is the highest tower if China, it is slim. New China Guangzhou Tower is not like a traditional TV tower,

The form, volume and structure are generated by two ellipses, one at foundation level and the other at an imaginary horizontal plane just above 450 metres. The tightening caused by the rotation between the two ellipses forms a ‘waist’ and a densification of material.

Various experiences in one tower

Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower is decorated in different styles when entering different floors. It is more like a tower collected a series of mini-buildings. These different style mini-buildings can be called gloating gardens varying in atmosphere; transparent, light and open at the base, and more closed and shaded at the waist of the tower.

Between level +170 meter and level +350 meter an open air staircase will lead the public all the way up through the narrow waist of the building. Here visitors can investigate the structure from close by while they are given a physical experience of the size of the tower.

Structure

The main load carrying elements of the tower's structural lattice are its steel columns which taper as they climb and twist up the building. Infilled with concrete, these are 1.8m in diameter at the bottom reducing to 800mm at the top. Horizontal rings of steel attached inside the columns keep these in the right position and help balance the forces created by the fact that they effectively slope. Diagonal members then give the structure added rigidity.

"By creating a triangulated framework, the sloping columns are stabilised while their elegance is maintained," explains from the designers.

There is an open-air staircase with views over the city in the waist area, where it does not make financial sense to build floors. "We're not looking at a building here. It's primarily a tower that has some floors,"