OMA’s CCTV building reconstructed as a wooden cabinet

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Built from Brazilian rosewood, the furniture piece echoes the landmark’s distorted loop shape and is carved with the same pattern of grooves used across the building’s facade. CCTV Wardrobe is the latest piece in Li’s I Am A Monument furniture series, which includes a bookcase in the form of the United Nations building in New York and day bed shaped like The Pentagon – home of the United States Department of Defence. The series references a legend of a Han Dynasty emperor who had the entire landscape of China recreated in miniature with bonsai trees. Sections of the structure open up to reveal storage compartments, including drawers with dividers in the base and a long cupboard housed in one of the towers. Naihan Li created the 1:100 scale model of the building, completed by OMA in 2012 as the headquarters for the Chinese Central Television company, to function as a wardrobe and storage cabinet. The installation will include an animation showing the cabinet rotating, opening and closing along with animated fog to represent «the billowing smog of Beijing’s wintery landscape», according to a statement from the gallery.