The project is located on an old district commercial street in Shenzhen, China. The city intends to use this site to revitalize and upgrade the adjacent area to regain the vanishing glory. The parcel is adjacent to the main street at north and east, with zoning requirement of public open space along the north. The total gross floor area is around 93,000 square meters, and the program is office, hotel and retail.
Studio Name: WoWA Architects
Design Team: WoWA
Area: 93,000 sqm
Year: 2022
Location: Shenzhen, China
Consultants: AECOM (Landscape Architect), LEOX (Lighting Engineer), ALT (Façade Engineer), WET (landscape water features designer), Gartner (Façade Contractor)
Photography Credits: Fei Wu
Other Credits: WoWA
Our design goal is to create an exquisite landmark tower with beauty, elegancy and simplicity.
The tower’s design concept is Magnolia flower bud, a local flower species. Vertically curved massing, corner cut and façade rim gently sculpture and accentuate the flower pedals.
Entrance canopy, and tower crown further defined the curved design vocabularies and enrich the tower’s poetic connections to the nature, sky and earth.
Sunken plaza at the north is designed for the required public space which can bring in natural light for basement and create quiet and sound place for the neighborhood and project users to escape the daily routines.
Crystal shape podium façade activates and engages the building with the public space and provides rich impression in addition to curve design elements. Events and celebrations will be often hosted in the sunken plaza to welcome guests. A cable bridge links the corporate icon with the surrounding communities.
Client desired a tall corporate icon of more than 200m in height but only allowed to build 62,000 square meters gross floor area above grade, which cause quite small average floor plate size around 1,200 square meters. So the plan design needs to be extremely efficient and the floor depth from the core needs to be maximized. We cut the building corner not only to shape the building massing articulation with better and slender proportion, but also to create more corner offices and decent floor depth.
Lessen tower crown and local code of no more than 15m height parapet complicated the difficulties of tower top coordination regarding roof skylight, BMU, water tank, elevator and egress stair overrun and other MEP requirements. We built all elements in 3D and study how to stack up different needs to utilize the very limited roof space and ensure building façade can cover the components which we don’t want to show, but only illustrate clean, beautiful and smooth curve skyline for the cityscape.
Client requests a more sustainable and durable façade material, so we introduce 316 stainless steel cladding rather than regular painted aluminum for all facade metal elements. High quality material, delicate building envelope craftmanship, well-designed landscape with water features, all add on to demonstrate the beauty of the project. We believe that, together, we have made a timeless landmark.
