Can architecture itself open up a society?

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who is building CCTV’s massive new headquarters, diverts criticism for colluding with totalitarianism, saying in an interview with Die Zeit, “The West is critical, always only critical… We simply must recognize that the rights of the individual have no tradition in China.”

Architecture journalist Gerhard Matzig sees it less forgivingly: “The thoughts and feelings of one sixth of the human race are programmed and administered here. Whether the skulls of innocent monks are smashed in Tibet, or aggressive acts of sabotage by dangerous separatists are successfully thwarted, the truth is the truth of television which can broadcast journalism or propaganda.”

One half of the world’s construction cranes are in Beijing. Another quarter are in Dubai. As a result, crane rental prices have tripled since the 1990s. Attempts to blame a New York City crane accident, killing 7, on shoddy Chinese construction — recalling several school collapses in Sichuan province — failed when blame fell on a New Jersey welding company. The blame in Sichuan falls on “multiple layers of government and private companies.”

The toll of devastation in Sichuan province is now at 69,000 dead, 17,991 injured, and 5 million homeless. For the reconstruction frenzy, Premier Wen Jiabao signed on Sunday a new law, possibly the first of its kind, that calls for more supervision, openness, and “audit organs,” during the process. Without strict enforcement, however, “time and money, not safe construction standards, will be the top priority.”

Back in Beijing, all fireworks have been banned, from July 1 to October 8, from city center to beyond the 5th ring road. In 2007, New York lifted a 10 year ban on fireworks before the Chinese New Year, when there were “long, vertically suspended lines of more than 300,000 firecrackers for maximum impact.”

As Vanity Fair’s William Langewiesche puts it, Beijing “presents the most unabashedly totalitarian cityscape in the world today, the kind of parade-ground capital that governments everywhere dream of building—hinted at in Washington, D.C., and achieved in Moscow to a greater degree, but nowhere executed to this extent.” ❑