Just back from summer holiday and the ever reliable Global Times scores immediately with a piece on a supposed online controversy (as is their common practice backed up with the results of an online poll, which are surely meaningless and easily manipulated even by the loose standards of statistics) revolving around the CCTV Towers, about which we have written often. Apparently the nickname most commonly in use “Big Underpants” doesn’t reflect what Chinese netizens think is the main resemblance of the buildings, which the story says are supposed to represent the male and female genitalia (the story has an accompanying picture for those who need guidance; the male building, by the way, which was to house the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, is the one that went up in flames, though I don’t think that was part of the symbolism).
Anyway, here are the money grafs, quotes from the firm of architects who designed the towers:
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas published a statement on oma.nl, the website of his company, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), saying, “The glorious CCTV building stands as the shining symbol for the ever-changing world order, and that’s the exact intent of our design.”
(Is it just me or is this a piece of meaningless pseudery?)
The statement also denies that pictures portraying the tower as human genitalia were produced by OMA, indicating that the pictures were circulated on the Internet in 2005 and are not connected to the company.
Pretty priceless stuff. Rather akin to asking a politician “when did you stop beating your wife?” to elicit a denial and then publishing a big headline saying, “Politician Denies Beating Wife.”