Since his early days at China State Construction Engineering Corp., Wang Xiangming has faced challenging tasks. His current job as project executive for the 473,000-sq-meter multipurpose station and headquarters for China Central Television is certainly the pinnacle. The job is so tough that the project team describes its goal as creating “construction miracles.”
The building’s two leaning towers, which each slope 6° on both the X and Y axis, are connected by a base structure and by a 13-story “overhang” suspended 36 stories in the air. Innovations developed for the construction methods won 10 patents from the Chinese government. For example, a 40-meter-long mobile platform was developed to provide a safe place to erect structural members underneath the overhang. China State crews also used 600 monitoring stations to make sure the inclined steel moved into the correct final positions.