According to Chinese officials, the New Century Global Center in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province) is the largest freestanding building in the world, and took three years to complete.
|The building is capable of fitting 20 Sydney Opera Houses – or three Pentagons – inside.
It is a staggering 1,765,158 sqm and contains shopping centres, a Mediterranean village, a water park, an ice-skating rink, and multiple hotels.
The building is 500 m long, 400 m wide and 100 m high.
The building sits directly opposite the Chengdu Contemporary Arts Centre, designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, at the heart of a booming area of Chengdu.
Visitors to New Century Global Centre can browse 400,000 sqm of shops inside the complex.The gigantic dome-like glass roof is 100 m high and has an “artificial sun” that will provide light and heat 24 hours a day. As well as the shops, hotels and the artificial sun, the building also has an indoor water park.
Looking for the biggest building in the world is pretty interesting as opinions differ on how to establish the ranking.
Till recently, the second largest administrative building in the world, was in Bucharest, Romania, the “Palace of Parliament”, 330,000 sqm, built by the megalomaniac dictator Ceausescu; I visited that place on 13 September 2011 (see the picture) and it is indeed gigantic and… looks pretty similar to the Jinan government office building: the largest office building in the world would be the Long’ao Building, Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province (China), with 370,000 sqm. It is used by the city government. The Pentagon counts 600,000 sqm totally but only 340,000 sqm is used as office.
It is one of those excesses of local government in China and received a lot of criticism on the Chinese Internet. The building’s cost: US$ 640 million. Never mind poor kids who have no decent schools. The office space for the “leaders” is well above the Chinese government norms. The good thing is, people talk about it and even Global Times. But you wonder why nobody mentioned it earlier: the monstrosity was completed in 2007. It took the media five years to “discover” it.
Picture of the Jinan building, see the original article and the picture: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/749633.shtml
