Barun Roy: Building prosperity

ASIA FILE

A new Asia is emerging, architecturally speaking, and some of it is so cutting-edge that it takes one's breath away

When I first visited Kuala Lumpur 35 years ago, the Batu Caves, a Hindu shrine a few miles outside the city, were among its major attractions for visiting tourists. Asia was still entrenched in its past. Singapore was known for its Chinatown, shophouses, and the Merlion statue; Bangkok for its temples; and Manila for its Spanish churches, a Second World War American cemetery, and a palm-lined, Spanish-style, bay-side boulevard that gave the otherwise humdrum city a strange Mediterranean flavour.

Today, Asia is no longer known by its past alone. In the past two decades or so, with a determination that has often bordered on the aggressive, Asia has acquired an astounding range of entirely different icons that tourists now associate the region with. Kuala Lumpur has the Petronas Twin Towers, only recently deposed as the world's tallest building; Singapore has The Esplanade, a 4-hectare performing arts centre with an architecture that's simply sensational; Bangkok has the Baiyoke Tower II, an 85-storey symbol of the city's new incarnation; Manila has the Rockwell Centre, a dazzling complex of state-of-the-art residential, commercial, and office buildings in a resort-like setting of lushly landscaped grounds.

It's a transformation that's nothing short of revolutionary "" one that has seen other modern-day landmarks emerge all over the region, from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing to Seoul, and even to Taipei, where Taipei 101, currently the world's tallest building, shaped like a Chinese pagoda and featuring the world's fastest elevators (ground to the 89th floor observation deck in a mere 39 seconds), is fuelling the government's hopes of luring foreign tourists in bigger numbers.

A new Asia is emerging, architecturally speaking, and some of it is so cutting-edge that it takes one's breath away. While it may be argued that the new Asian architecture isn't Asian in spirit and so doesn't belong here, its influence has indeed been far-reaching. It acts like a kind of magic wand that coaxes a sedate, ancient landscape, frozen by history, into sparkling life, creating a unique blend of old and new "" past and future "" that tourists find irresistible. It lends Asia a visual dynamism that's as attractive as the immense variety of its demography, culture, and cuisine. Detractors may not like it, but the new architecture is now an unavoidable part of Asia's brand image as a region bubbling with growth and future potential.

And nowhere is this new image more evident than in China, whose investment and tourist statistics leave no one in any doubt that the world is captivated by what it sees. Here's one country with a glorious past and a history going back thousands of years. Here's also a country that's prepared to embrace the new and confront the future with an unbelievably open mind. It's this perception of China as a country in dynamic transition, open to ideas from wherever they can be obtained, that makes it so exciting, and it's the unabashed futurism of its new architecture, contributed by some of the best-known international architects, which tells the world that the transition they see is not a mirage.

When the world descends on Beijing for the 2008 summer Olympics, the reality of China's change is going to hit it straight in the face, and hard. Some might be shocked, others surprised, but for everyone the encounter is going to be memorable. With more than 10 million square metres of new construction, a brand new airport terminal, 148.5 km of new subways and light railway tracks, 718 km of new expressways, and thousands of kilometres of new motorways, Beijing will be a breathtakingly new city transplanted on the old, and at least four of its upcoming landmarks will survive as all-time tourist attractions, as compelling as the Great Wall.

These are (1) the National Grand Theatre, nicknamed The Eggshell, for its unique design as an oval made of titanium metal and glass, with semi-transparent, golden-netted glass walls glowing with day and night lights and fast changing colours; (2) the Z Crisscross, China Central Television's proposed new headquarters, an iconic configuration of high-rise towers conceived as a continuous loop that could be mistaken for a mammoth abstract sculpture; (3) the main Olympic stadium, a magnificent construction of grey mining steel, covered with a transparent membrane, which will look from the outside like a huge bird's nest with interwoven twigs and undulating high and low elevations; and (4) the Olympic swimming centre designed to look like a semi-transparent water cube with make-believe bubbles all over its surface and simmering blue lighting to heighten the sensation of flowing water.

This new face of China is stunning. The courage to present it is even more so. What could be a more convincing proof that China means business, that between its reality and its vision there's no ominous shadow threatening to fall?