Skyline sculptor

An architect found that the amazing form of an iconic Beijing building shaped her own career after spending more than a decade as project manager for the CCTV Headquarters, she tells Sun Yuanqing.

The snow was falling thick and fast - by noon, about half a meter had accumulated on the ground. Yao Dongmei was packing to catch a flight from New York to Rotterdam that afternoon, but she knew it would be delayed.

"I sensed that the heavy snow was an omen for the heavy workload ahead," Yao says, recalling the day-Feb 17, 2003-a turning point in her career.

The woman behind the CCTV Headquarters, now a landmark in the CBD area in Beijing, Yao made one of the most controversial architectural designs become a reality after devoting 11 years reaching across cultures and languages as the project manager.

"Every architect has a dream of realizing his or her own design idea, but to have assisted and seen the architects from two worlds display their talents to the fullest extent has made me realize that this is more important than realizing my own dream," says Yao, 47.

Designed by OMA's RemKoolhaas and Ole Scheeren, the CCTV Headquarters was named the Best Tall Building Worldwide 2013 by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat for its "unusual take on the skyscraper typology" last November.

However, few people know more about what it took to achieve than Yao.

Yao joined OMA's CCTV project as an architect in 2003 after OMA won the competition to design the building. Its local partner East China Architectural Design & Research Institute was involved in the early stages of schematic and extended preliminary design.

When construction documentation began in 2005, OMA sent a team of more than 10 architects to Beijing to assist the local team as the drawings were reviewed. The team stayed on the site during the construction phase.

"From the sketch to the size of a joint between ceiling and wall to the overall visual effect, the architects have to be on the site all the time to ensure that the building turned out as designed," Yao says.

In the early days, Chinese architects barely spoke English while the Europeans knew little about the Chinese. Yao, who'd studied and worked in both the East and West, naturally became a bridge between the Chinese and the Westerners, translating and explaining what was implied on the design scheme.

Yao soon settled in the role of a project manager, and her 11-month contract with OMA on the CCTV project eventually extended to 11 years and is likely to last even longer.

"I once talked with an architect friend and we agreed that some projects call for architect's devotion of both body and soul," Yao says. Her colleague said that the finished building exhausts the architects, and makes them feel that some of their body parts-or part of their lives have become part of the building.

Born and raised in China, Yao earned a bachelor's degree in architecture in Tsinghua University and worked in the Architectural Design and Research Institute there before she went to the US in 1993 and got a master's degree in architecture at Miami University. Yao worked for several architectural firms in New York City as a licensed architect. She joined OMA in Rotterdam in 2003 and came back to Beijing for the CCTV project in 2004.

All her passion for the project sprung from the first moment she saw the design, she recalls.

"It instantly struck me with the unprecedented structure. But I never thought that I would have the chance to get involved and for so long," Yao says.

The 234-meter skyscraper was completed in May 2012. The adjacent Television Cultural Center, which caught fire in 2009, is undergoing reconstruction with a hotel and a theater inside, Yao says.

Debate has never stopped about the CCTV building. Locals dubbed it "the big pants" because of its shape, while architects have criticized its enormous size and cost. But Yao remains cool in the face of the controversy.

"Time will tell," Yao says. "Every country has its own moment for great architectures. For New York, it was the early 1900s. And in China, it could be now."

Contact the writer at sunyuanqing@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily USA 01/09/2014 page10)