China developer ‘copies’ star architect’s design
Already famed for fake designer bags and pirated DVDs, imitation in China may have reached new heights with a set of towers that strongly resemble ones designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid.
A developer in the southwestern city of Chongqing is putting up buildings that share the distinctive round contours and white stripes of a 39-floor shopping and office complex conceived by the British-Iraqi designer and being built in Beijing.
Satoshi Ohashi, project director at Zaha Hadid Architects for the Beijing complex, told Der Speigel Online: “It is possible that the Chongqing pirates got hold of some digital files or renderings of the project.”
It could rank among the more flagrant ripoffs in a country already notorious for imitating foreign products without permission – but the developer of the Chongqing project, Meiquan 22nd Century, has denied any copying.
Such accusations “do not conform with the truth” and “have had a negative impact” on the company, general manager Yao Yumao said at an earlier press conference, according to a transcript published online.
China’s ability to reproduce foreign products is best known for imitation luxury purses and copies of Hollywood films. But knockoffs have ranged from a three-dollar version of Kate Middleton’s engagement ring to fake Apple stores and an entire Austrian village.
In this year a developer unveiled a recreation of the centuries-old alpine hamlet of Hallstatt, a Unesco World Heritage site, in what the state-run news agency Xinhua called “a bold example of China’s knock-off culture”.
