Shenzhen City Hall and Civic Center

At first glance you might think it looks weird for a city hall/civic center to be shaped like that, but staring at it further and looking at it closely I could understand the city's attempt to create such an iconic landmark blending modern touches with the sweeping classic Chinese architecture.

With a 91 thousand square meter footprint (979,524 square feet) and 210 thousand square meters of floorspace (2,260,440 square feet), this is a big building.

The roc is Shenzhen's symbol and the Shenzhen's Civic Centre's soaring roofline is meant to be evocative of the roc's mythical wingspan.

Many feel that Shenzhen's Civic Centre architecture also hearkens to Tang dynasty architecture (618-907 AD ... with a brief break from 690-705 when Wu Zetian seized the throne to briefly usher in the Second Zhou Dynasty... China's only official female leader, but I digress).

Shenzhen's Civic Centre's architect was Li Mingyi and it was built by the Shenzhen QiXin Construction Group Co., Ltd. (see their website archive here for more images of it...) and finished in 2004. : http://e-cuneiform.blogspot.com/2009/03/shenzhen-museum-of-history-in-shenzhen.html