Canton Tower
— — a tower with a waist.
Not only on a wall.
“A 604-metre hyperboloid lattice rising from the south bank of the Pearl River in Guangzhou. The Dutch architects who drew it (Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit) gave it a narrowed waist about a third of the way up, so the steel mesh seems to twist as it climbs. At night the LED skin changes colour slowly across the hour. From across the river the tower reads as a single line of light.
Canton Tower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Canton Tower stands 604 metres tall on the south bank of the Pearl River in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou, directly across from the city's new central business district at Zhujiang New Town. It was completed in September 2010 for the November Asian Games and opened to the public on 1 October 2010. Designed by the Amsterdam firm Information Based Architecture, led by Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit, with engineering by Arup, the tower briefly held the title of the world's tallest tower until the Tokyo Skytree topped out in March 2011.
The outer lattice carries a programmable LED skin designed by Rogier van der Heide that runs the full 600-metre height of the structure. After dusk the colour shifts slowly across the hour, often through deep blues and magentas, finishing on a slow white at the close of the nightly show. The skin reads cleanly from across the Pearl River at the Haixinsha Island promenade, where the 2010 Asian Games opening ceremony was staged on a floating barge directly in front of the tower.
The observation experience runs from the basement entrance up through several decks: the main indoor floor at 433 metres, an outdoor walkway, and the Bubble Tram that rides a 455-metre rail loop around the rooftop in 16 glass cabins. Tickets are sold at the on-site box office and through the official site; the rooftop closes earlier than the indoor levels and weather can shut the tram entirely. The nearest Metro stop is Canton Tower on Line 3, opened with the tower in 2010.