Freaky heights: Villa atop a tower
Print Edition
An eccentric Beijing resident has built a huge “landscape,” including a villa, rockery and plants, on the top of a 26-story apartment building in the capital, triggering wide complaints and posing safety risks for residents.
Its owner Zhang Biqing, also owns a chain of acupuncture clinics.
Neighbors have complained about the architectural oddity, which covers more than 1,000 square meters, saying they fear it could cause the structure to collapse on top of them, the Beijing Morning Post reported yesterday.
The 26-floor building was designed with a 1000-square-meter duplex on the top.
In a six-year period, a two-story villa, with rockery and trees around, was built on the rooftop. The rocks, said to be imitation shells rather than solid stone, have trees and bushes growing among them. Poking out from between them, sections of the house underneath can be seen — a blue-framed window here, a balcony under a curved roof there.
But the renovation has never ended.
During the construction, pipelines of the apartment building were damaged. Several neighbors suffered water leaks during rainy days and have seen cracks in their walls, the newspaper reported.
At least two neighbors have moved out because of the construction work, which has been going on for years, it said.
A neighbor said he had been living there since last year. “I always hear electric drills howling in daytime, and sometimes I am rudely awakened by music. I learnt that Zhang’s singing room was built above my room.
“We feel really unsafe. What if the rooftop collapsed under gales and our ceilings also collapsed,” he asked.
Though he had complained to property management officials several times, there seems to be no solution in sight, the newspaper said.
An official in charge of the building, however, said that he has not been able to talk to Zhang simply because the latter rarely opens his door.
On the one occasion when the official met Zhang in the building garage, the latter retorted: “Since I dare to live here, I am not afraid of the complaints. You can’t ban celebrities singing when they come here.”
Authorities set a 15-day deadline yesterday demanding Zhang demolish the illegal structure himself or present a defense to the urban management bureau of Haidian District. Otherwise, law enforcement officials will carry out the job themselves.
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