3D print the CCTV Headquarters
A free, printable model of the CCTV Headquarters, its loop of leaning sections with a diagonal grid, and the roads and neighboring buildings around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the CCTV Headquarters
The CCTV Headquarters stands on Guanghua Road, beside the East Third Ring Road, in Beijing's Central Business District (CBD), and serves as the headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV). OMA's Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren led the architecture, while Cecil Balmond of Arup handled the engineering design, which was complex. Work started on June 1, 2004, and the facade was finished in January 2008.
Instead of a traditional tower, the building is a loop made of horizontal and vertical sections, with 473,000 m2, or 5,090,000 square feet, of floor space. The loop leaves an open center, and its facade forms an irregular grid. Building it in a seismic zone was considered a structural challenge. The loop is intended to symbolize collectivity, communication, continuity and integration, and it is said a taxi driver first coined its nickname, "big boxer shorts."
The sections were joined on May 30, 2007. To avoid locking in structural differences, the connection was set for the early hours, once the steel in both towers had cooled to the same temperature. On January 1, 2002, OMA won the contract to build it, having won an international design competition. Some architectural critics hailed it as the century's greatest architectural work, and in 2013 a council devoted to tall buildings and urban habitat named it Best Tall Building Worldwide.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 65 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 81 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 103 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- Fine diagonal facade grid
- The facade is covered in a fine diagonal grid. Print friendly adapts these thin lines to the print scale; Full detail keeps them, which suits a larger print or a fine nozzle. Layers of 0.12 to 0.16 mm keep the lines crisp.
- Leaning sections and overhangs
- Two sections lean, and the top section reaches across the open center. Printing slowly with good cooling, and choosing a larger print size, help overhangs like these stay clean.
- One piece with the ground
- The CCTV Headquarters is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The CCTV Headquarters takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The CCTV Headquarters is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a CCTV Headquarters STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The CCTV Headquarters grows with the print: about 65 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
