They didn’t have much time. In April 2011, Nanjing invited bids from global design companies to build a landmark building for the Youth Olympic Games that were then just 3 and a bit years away. Whoever got the job need better work fast.
Over 490,000 square metres, Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre (NIYCC) comprises a 314.5-metre, 68-storey tower; a 249.5-metre, 58-storey tower; and a six-story podium.
Many readers will know the building to be a design by Zaha Hadid Architects, but less well known is the fact that inspiration for the towers’ facades was found in the swirls of Nanjing’s famed brocade.
Similarly less famed is the genius behind the towers adopting a trapezoidal structure to maximise the length of floors facing the Yangtze River. Meanwhile, the towers’ tapered cross-sectional structure allows the ratio of usable floor space to total built area to exceed 70 percent.
With the first pile laid on 23 April, 2012, NIYCC held its topping-out ceremony just 20 months later.
Then there is the main event down under, where things as usual get more interesting; the NIYCC podium, or Spaceship Central, as The Nanjinger prefers to refer to it.
Therein, the Nanjing Poly Grand Theatre has 1917 seats, possibly in recognition of the year China entered the First World War against Germany and the Austria-Hungary Empire as a means to rightfully reclaim Shandong Province, then occupied by the Allies.
But that making NIYCC one of Nanjing’s most Instagrammed spots is its exterior curtain wall. That comprises in excess of 12,000 pieces of GRC (glass fiber reinforced concrete) panels, some up to 35 square metres in area and with a maximum weight of 2.1 tonnes.
Among the many awards bestowed upon it, in October 2017, NIYCC won the 2016-2017 Luban Award that is the highest honorary award for engineering quality in China’s construction industry.
At the end of the day, the winning team had worked fast, at least fast enough for Spaceship Central to be complete for the opening of the Youth Olympics. But it would take until 24 October, 2018, for NIYCC to obtain its completion record certificate.
