As Spring Festival approaches, (the Chinese New Year falls on February 14th) more and more red is appearing throughout the cityscape. No doubt that this ribbon of colour, being painstakingly applied by workers dwarfed by the drab facade, is a Spring Festival decoration.

A Cinderella-esque skyline
In Guangzhou city centre, along the banks of the Pearl River, after dusk, light displays bring buildings and bridges to life. During the day, the contours of the hotels, apartment buildings and offices that line the river are smudged into forgettable oblivion by the greyish humid, smog-filled air.

And then, as soon as darkness has fallen, they’re dolled up with colourful neon or LED-lights and screens. Vying for attention like assertive wallflowers at a school ball, mindless yet mesmerizing animations, shapes, colour-shifts, often spanning the whole facade, turn them into the belles of the ball. Only to be turned back into black shadows again as the clock strikes 10 pm.

Today I finally got around to checking out Guangzhou’s new landmark TV and Siteseeing Tower, designed by Dutch architect office Information Based Architecture. It’s sheer height (610 m including the antenna) makes it an hard to miss in the skyline of Guangzhou. (That is, on those rare days that the smog and/or humidity don’t shroud the city in a blanket of fuzziness.)

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