The Irish Times

CCTV Building

Rory McGowan, the Monaghan man who is engineering the structure of the world's most futuristic building, CCTV in Beijing, is explaining how best to visualise the startling behemoth that will transform the skyline of China's capital for the Olympic Games in 2008. "Imagine four Canary Wharf towers. Bend two in the middle, use one as the base, another as the top section and place the final two as upright towers leaning at an angle, and you get a basic idea of what CCTV will look like," says McGowan. "This will redefine architecture and how people think about big buildings. It's not about height," he says, excited at the prospect of building the headquarters for China's state broadcaster. McGowan's Monaghan accent is still there as he animatedly points out features on the site, which has just had one of the biggest concrete pours the world has ever seen, and the way he tells it, it's easy to imagine how the CCTV building will be one of the truly magical structures to come out of the construction boom transforming Beijing.