Jing Guang Centre, High-rise hotel, office and apartment complex in Hujialou Subdistrict, Beijing, China
Jing Guang Centre is a 208.7 m tower at Hujialou with 52 floors above ground, two rooftop pavilion levels and three basement levels. Its glass curtain wall is divided into three sections inspired by the triple eaves of the Temple of Heaven, and the five-storey podium has red bands in its marble joints and a gold parapet, echoing traditional red walls and yellow tiles. The main tower holds hotel, offices and apartments, with an extra office wing on the north side.
Construction began in December 1985, the steel structure topped out on 19 July 1988 and the centre was completed in June 1990, opening for trial business on 18 June 1990. It was the tallest building in Beijing from 1989 to 2006 and in mainland China until 1996, when Shanghai's King Tower and Shenzhen's Shun Hing Square surpassed it. In 1989 Hong Kong's New World Development bought the 20.5% stake held by Kumagai Gumi, its first investment in Beijing.
The name "Jing Guang" combines Beijing and Guangdong, the two partners behind the project, and the fan-shaped plan echoes the three tiers of the Temple of Heaven's Qinian Hall. The exterior sign is in traditional characters, kept after the national language authority accepted it as calligraphy. The hotel later became the Rosewood Beijing.
The tower stands at the northwest corner of the Hujialou intersection on East Third Ring Road, with three basement levels and a five-storey podium below the main shaft. The podium's marble joints are capped with red strips and the parapet with gold trim, echoing traditional red walls and yellow tiles. The main tower's three sections are hotel, offices and apartments, with extra office space in a side building to the north.
On 3 July 1990 Deng Xiaoping arrived at the Jing Guang Centre in an ordinary medium-sized sedan with his wife, three daughters and a grandson, and took the apartment lift to the 40th-floor reception hall. Looking out over the low single-storey houses below, he asked vice-mayor Zhang Baifa when the area would be redeveloped.
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