Construction of Chinese online media company Sina’s new headquarters was recently completed and the building located in Zhongguancun Software Plaza in northwest Beijing is now ready for use. Here come the imaginative netizens who say that the building resembles an infinity sign or sanitary napkin…
The infinity shape represents the infinite connections made by messages and information, which represents Sina’s corporate culture, wrote Sina Finance on its official Weibo account.
But voices from netizens may be even more illustrative:
“This is what an internet company is supposed to look like!”
“So this is another one of those weirdly-shaped buildings?”
“The building is shaped like a sanitary pad to give the message that female health and hygiene deserve more public attention.”
The headquarters, which cost Sina RMB 1.5 billion (USD 230 million), occupies 2.9 hectares and has a gross floor area of 132,200㎡. It was designed and constructed by China’s top property developer R&F Properties, with Aedas, one of the world’s biggest architectural firms, acting as consultant. The building has six floors above ground and three underground, and is equipped with working spaces, lounges, gyms, cafeterias, parking lots and more.
Other “weirdly-shaped buildings” in China include the CCTV Tower in Beijing, which looks like a pair of pants, the Gate of the Orient in Suzhou, which has been compared to long johns, and the gymnasium and natatorium of the Hangzhou Olympic and International Expo Center, which together resemble a bikini. And that’s just part of the laundry list.
Sina was founded in 1998. It runs China’s top social media platform Weibo, which has 261 million monthly active users.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)