Hasta La Ideas

News: the largest man-made structure in the world has opened in China’s Sichuan province, housing hotels, offices, a beach resort and an artificial sun.

Capable of housing 20 Sydney Opera Houses or three Pentagons in its staggering 1.7 million square-metre interior the New Century Global Centre in Chengdu opened its doors on 1 July 2013.

The colossal 18-storey glass and steel superstructure has a wavy roof and is built above a new metro station. The building is 500 metres long, 400 metres wide and stands 100 metres high.

A 65 metre-high lobby covering 10,000 square metres greets visitors as they enter the centre. Visitors will then find the Paradise Island Oceanic Park, with a 400 metre sandy beach and the world’s largest indoor LED screen that projects images of seascapes and horizons.

There is also one of China’s largest shopping malls, a 14-screen Imax cinema, an Olympic-sized ice rink, two five-star hotels and a central business tower with 720,000 square metres of office space.

Here’s a 15-minute promotional video about the centre:

The New Century Global Centre sits directly opposite the 500,000 square-foot Chengdu Contemporary Arts Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects. The arts centre comprises three auditoria, an art museum, exhibition space and conference centre, plus restaurants, bars and shops.

The news comes less than a month after construction started on the Songjiang Hotel that will nestle into the 100 metre-high rockface of an abandoned water-filled quarry outside Shanghai. See more architecture in China »

Photography is from Entertainment and Travel Group.

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opens in China appeared first on Dezeen.

New York architect Steven Holl describes how he designed the mixed-use Sliced Porosity Block complex in Chengdu, China, as a container for public space in the first of two movies by architectural filmmakers Spirit of Space.

“This is an example of how you can shape space first and the architecture supports that,” explains Holl. “This isn’t just some iconic skyscraper.”

Completed at the end of 2012, Sliced Porosity Block is of one of a string of recent projects by Steven Holl Architects in China, which include a pair of museums for Tianjin, a “horizontal skyscraper” in Shenzhen and the Linked Hybrid complex in Beijing. “One of the things about working in China is that right now I feel it’s a culture that understands the urgency of building for the future,” says Holl.

The complex comprises a cluster of five towers around a public plaza, with a shopping centre tucked underneath. Holl cites New York’s Rockefeller Centre as inspiration for his design concept, which rejects the “towers and podium” approach commonly adopted for large mixed-use developments. “Rockafella Centre shapes a big public space without any building being iconic,” he says.

In the movie, the architect gives a walking tour of the completed project and visits some of the integrated installations, including the Light Pavilion designed by Lebbeus Woods. “The concept of buildings within buildings was something that was driving the original design,” he adds.

See more images of Sliced Porosity Block in our earlier story, or see more architecture by Steven Holl Architects.

Spirit of Space previously filmed two movies about Steven Holl’s Daeyang Gallery and House, an underground gallery with a pool of water underneath. See more movies by Spirit of Space on Dezeen.

Architectural photography is by Hufton + Crow.

The post “This isn’t just some iconic skyscraper”
– Steven Holl on Sliced Porosity Block appeared first on Dezeen.

New York firm Steven Holl Architects has completed the Sliced Porosity Block, a cluster of five towers around a public plaza in Chengdu, China (+ slideshow + photographs by Hufton + Crow).

The buildings, designed by Steven Holl in 2007, were conceived as an alternative to the “towers and podium” approach commonly adopted for large mixed-use developments. Instead, the five towers were imagined as an integrated complex, with a central public space that wraps up over a shopping centre.

Holl explained: “In our time of iconic object buildings, the Sliced Porosity Block offers an alternative – realising three million square feet of mixed uses with the public space coming first.”

Light passes between the buildings through “sliced” openings and recesses, plus three large voids provide entrance pavilions that lead inside the complex.

These pavilions include the Light Pavilion, a four-storey construction of steel rods and glass platforms that is the first built project by architect Lebbeus Woods, who passed away this Autumn.

“Lebbeus’s pavilion, constructed of huge beams of light, is a place one enters at several levels,” said Holl. “One’s experience there, especially at night, seems to dissolve the view of the city beyond. Up is down in a feeling of suspension of gravity via light and reflection.”

Staircases lead up to the central plaza, which comprises three terraces with seating areas, trees and large pools of water. These pools also function as skylights for the shopping centre below.

Explaining the importance of this space, Holl said: “The public plaza is [the building’s] gift to the city. Having seen the people eagerly using this space is a real joy.”

White concrete frameworks are expressed on the exterior of the towers and reveal diagonal braces that protect the structure during earthquakes.

Each building is heated and cooled geothermally, plus the large ponds are cooling devices that harvest and recycle rainwater.

This isn’t the first project by Steven Holl Architects in China. The firm previously completed the Linked Hybrid complex of eight connected towers in Beijing and a “horizontal skyscraper” in Shenzhen. See more stories about Steven Holl.

These images by photographers Hufton + Crow show the impact of the building on its surrounding context, just like the shots they took of Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy Soho in Beijing. See more photography by Hufton + Crow on Dezeen.

Here’s some more information from Steven Holl Architects:

Sliced Porosity Block
Chengdu, China

In the center of Chengdu, China, at the intersection of the first Ring Road and Ren Ming Nam Road, the Sliced Porosity Block forms large public plazas with a hybrid of different functions. Creating a metropolitan public space instead of object-icon skyscrapers, this three million square foot project takes its shape from its distribution of natural light.

The required minimum sunlight exposures to the surrounding urban fabric prescribe precise geometric angles that slice the exoskeletal concrete frame of the structure. The building structure is white concrete organized in six foot high openings with earthquake diagonals as required while the “sliced” sections are glass.

The large public space framed in the center of the block is formed into three valleys inspired by a poem of the city’s greatest poet, Du Fu (713-770), who wrote, ‘From the northeast storm-tossed to the southwest, time has left stranded in Three Valleys.’ The three plaza levels feature water gardens based on concepts of time—the Fountain of the Chinese Calendar Year, Fountain of Twelve Months, and Fountain of Thirty Days. These three ponds function as skylights to the six-story shopping precinct below.

Establishing human scale in this metropolitan rectangle is achieved through the concept of “micro urbanism,” with double-fronted shops open to the street as well as the shopping center. Three large openings are sculpted into the mass of the towers as the sites of the pavilion of history, designed by Steven Holl Architects, the Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods, and the Local Art Pavilion.

The Sliced Porosity Block is heated and cooled with 468 geothermal wells and the large ponds in the plaza harvest recycled rainwater, while the natural grasses and lily pads create a natural cooling effect. High-performance glazing, energy-efficient equipment and the use of regional materials are among the other methods employed to reach the LEED Gold rating.

Program: five towers with offices, serviced apartments, retail, a hotel, cafes, and restaurants, and large urban public plaza
Client: CapitaLand Development
Building area (square): 3,336,812 sf

Above: concept sketch

Above: plan concept sketch

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by Steven Holl Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Shanghai studio Archi-Union used differently sized bricks to make waves across the exterior of this restaurant and members’ club at a cultural heritage park in Chengdu, China (+ slideshow).

The architects used an algorithm to specify nine different brick types, which were laid by hand to create the wave-like texture across each wall.

Sloping roofs visually divide the longitudinal building into separate blocks and their curving shapes were designed by Archi-Union to reference mountains and rivers, as well as a typical form in Chinese architecture.

“The Lan Xi Curtilage is an interpretation of traditional Chinese architecture through the language of digital fabrication methods,” Archi-Union’s Crisie Yuan told Dezeen.

The restaurant and private club are positioned on opposite sides of a central courtyard, where pathways divide the lawn and dictate routes towards different rooms.

The Lan Xi Curtilage is located at the International Intangible Cultural Heritage Park, which plays host to a biennial festival dedicated to language, music, dance, storytelling, carnivals and rituals.

Earlier this year Archi-Union also completed a teahouse and library with twisted concrete walls.

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Other recent stories from China include skyscrapers inspired by spacecraft and a village of towering apartment blocks in the mountains.

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

See more stories about design in China »
See more stories about brick buildings and projects »

Above: roof plan – click above for larger image

Photography is by Shen Zhonghai.

Here’s some more information from Archi-Union:

The Lan Xi Curtilage

The spatial layout of this project represents a new interpretation of a traditional South China Garden. The multiple layouts of the longitudinal residence and courtyard reflect a hierarchical and multi-dimensional spatial pattern of traditional gardens. The silhouettes of the building’s roof embody rolling mountains and rivers, and also function as metaphor of the traditional Chinese sloping roof culture.

Above: courtyard concept diagram – click above for larger image

The design of the ripple wall derived from a digital interpretation of water, a flexible yet natural conception. We developed an algorithm that mimicked the transient behavior of water, which could be frozen in time allowing a literal architectural expression of its transient behavior. We adapted this algorithm to process a traditional building material, blue bricks, in a staggered joint pattern, in the same way as it produced a surface before, creating a bonded brick pattern with the intrinsic dynamics of water, and providing a light and transparent effect as well as structural walls.

Above: brickwork pattern diagram – click above for larger image

The design focuses on developing an artistic pattern as well as on creating a feasible fabrication pattern. As a robotic arm was not available to lay the bricks automatically due to financial constraints, the masonry had to be completed manually in order to match the rigorous schedule of the three month construction period. Five kinds of brick joint template were devised and the joint gradient was achieved through the permutation and classification of the five template values, which were translated to a simple brick-laying schedule. The finished building is testament that light and shadow playing across the façade embody the dynamic effects of water. A careful combination of digital design and lo-tec fabrication to actualize digital fabrication exactly reflects the combination of digital technologies and local materials and fabrication.

Above: roof structure diagram – click above for larger image

Location: International Intangible Cultural Heritage Park, Chengdu, China
Client: Chengdu Qingyang Suburb Construction & Development Co., Ltd.
Area: Approx 4000m2
Design: June, 2008 – March, 2009
Construction: April, 2010 – October, 2011
Architect: Philip F. Yuan / Archi-Union Architect

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by Archi-Union appeared first on Dezeen.