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“China Opens ‘World’s Largest Building’ — Complete With Indoor Beach, Fake Sun”
by National Post   
July 10th, 2013
CHINA-ARCHITECTURE-GLOBAL CENTER

China’s fourth largest city may have problems with smog, but you’d never know it sitting at the urban centre’s beachside resort. Of course, Chengdu, doesn’t have a beach, and the resort is indoors.

The city has just opened the New Century Global Centre, a structure that China touts as the “World’s Largest Building.” The giant structure has 1.76 million square metres of floor space and is half a kilometre long, 400 metres wide and more than 100 metres tall.

Contained inside is a 14-screen IMAX theatre, two five-star hotels, a shopping village and a long stretch of offices. The developers claim that you could fit more than 20 Sydney Opera Houses inside the Global Centre.

“We have borrowed a Japanese technique,” guide Liu Xun told the Sydney Morning Herald. “There is an artificial sun that shines 24 hours a day and allows for a comfortable temperature.”

The sun shines down on a manufactured beach-side resort built to hold over 6,000 people.

AFP/Getty Images
AFP/Getty ImagesThe "New Century Global Centre" building opens to the public in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province on June 28, 2013.

Of course, the Global Centre isn’t the only mega-building project in China. A few hundred kilometres away in Changsha, the Sky City project looks to erect the world’s tallest skyscraper.

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