image © Büro Ole Scheeren

The headquarters of the Chinese auction house is a celebration of the emerging hybrid nature of what art space has become.

I’m sitting in a hotel bar talking to German architect Ole Scheeren. Suddenly, he says something that makes my ears prick up.“This will be the first modern auction house building,” he repeats. Surely, I think, that can’t be true. But, of course, he’s right. Even the most expensive auction house buildings of recent years have been in existing, usually historic buildings.

The striking rendering Scheeren is showing me on his laptop in the gloomy bar of an HQ for China Guardian Auctions in Beijing is certainly new. Consisting of a block that also contains a hotel and large areas of “cultural space”, it is an extreme version of what all the major auction houses are trying to do: reposition themselves as cultural and lifestyle destinations.......Continue Reading

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