CCTV headquarters
Architect: OMA
Location: Beijing, China
Completed: 2008

Photo: © Iwan Baan

When OMA brought deconstuctivist architecture to China with its design of this skyscraper, the headquarters of Beijing-based Central China Television, it was not to everyone's taste. Indeed, the firm's principal, Rem Koolhaas, recently felt moved to defend the building's bold, uncompromising design after the Chinese president called for an end to the construction of 'weird architecture' in the country.

Photo: © Iwan Baan

According to OMA, the building is designed as an alternative to the 'exhausted typology of the skyscraper'. It went on to win an award for the best tall building of the year in 2013 from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).