Like all modern building construction of today, the task of designing Guangzhou's new TV tower was an international competition where interested architects submitted design proposals, and a team of judges decided on the best design among the proposal submitted. The architect team of Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit (husband and wife, in fact) of the Amsterdam-based company, Information Based Architecture (IBA), had submitted what was to be the winning design proposal. The IBA design proposal envisioned building the new TV tower in collaboration with the British engineering firm, Arup (whose founder is Danish-British Ove Arup) – in particular, in close cooperation with Arup's Dutch engineer, Joop Paul – and with the additional consultancy expertise of Chinese typhoon and earthquake specialists, since the city of Guangzhou is no stranger to these two naturally-occurring phenomena.
To get an idea of how stiff the design competition was, major international players such as Cannon Design, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), Richard Rogers and Coop Himmelb(l)au were among the other architect firms to submit proposals for the construction of Guangzhou's new TV tower. However, the unique and sleek design proposed by IBA, plus the fact that IBA had taken Arup on board, effectively made this a one-horse race.
Integral to the construction project was an urban area plan that would encompass not only the TV tower and the 18 hectare park surrounding its base, but also a television broadcasting center, an elevated plaza, a pagoda park, administrative offices, a shopping mall and an international class hotel – comprising in all roughly 74 hectares of new construction space, including green oases.