The atrium entrance to the “New Century Global Centre” building. (AFP/Getty Images)
(YouTube)
The “New Century Global Centre” building (top) is seen behind the Chengdu Contemporary Arts Centre. (AFP/Getty Images)
Visitors to China’s fourth largest city can escape the crowded streets and dense pollution by stepping into the largest building in the world.
The New Century Global Center in Chengdu is 1,600 feet long, 1,300 feet wide and almost 330 feet tall. The combination beach resort, movie theater, shopping center and hotel measures in at a staggering 5.77 million-square-feet.
That’s the equivalent of 20 Sydney Opera Houses or three Pentagons, according to The Independent.
After visitors enter the 18-story tall glass atrium-covered entrance to the Center they can travel down an aquarium lined path, through a town filled with Polynesian huts and middle eastern kasbahs to one of the colossal building’s biggest attractions: a 1,300 foot long wave pool which breaks against the largest LED screen in the world.
SEE MORE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST BUILDING
Up to 6,000 visitors to the man-made beach resort can splash in the water as they bathe under an artificial sun and and enjoy artificial sea breezes and lightscapes that can turn from a pleasant morning scene to a dramatic sunset that stretches “limitlessly in the temporal and spatial directions,” according to a video tour obtained by The Guardian.
“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.”
Besides the beach resort, the Center also has the usual assortment of mega-building accoutrements: a 14-sceen IMAX theater, a shopping center that looks like a Mediterranean village, numerous restaurants, and two five-star hotels.
The opulent Center is a stark contrast to the mega city in which it resides because Chengdu is considered to be one of the most polluted cities in the world.
Maybe that is why the Center houses both “comfortable and pompous” offices and 1,000 luxury hotel suites making it the perfect place for both work and play, according to the Center’s promotional video.
The New Century Global Center is the first of many “world’s biggest” projects to crop up in China.
In May, construction started on the 2,749 foot tall “Sky City” which will be 30 feet taller than the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifia in Dubai, according to Treehugger.
However, unlike the New Century Global Center, the Sky City is huge for a reason: it is seen as a viable way to tackle urban sprawl and rapid population growth.
The city in the sky is being built by the same firm which put together a 30-story hotel in just 15 days. The firm, Broad Group, are masters of erecting Lego-like prefab buildings and hope to complete the Sky City in 90 days by constructing 5 stories of the structure per day.
Joining The New Century Global Center and the Sky City s a hydroelectric dam project on the Dadu river in Sichuan which will be the tallest dam in the world – at 1,030 feet – when it is completed, according to The Guardian.