Hasta La Ideas

News: the architecture and design department at the V&A museum in London has acquired Katy Perry Lashes (pictured) and Primark jeans as part of a new “rapid response” strategy for collecting objects as soon as they become newsworthy, to reflect the changing way fast-moving global events influence society (+ interview).

The V&A is thought to be the first major museum in the world to adopt such a strategy, which is radically different from traditional methods for curating design and manufactured objects.

“The rapid response collecting strategy is a new strand to the V&A museum’s collections policy, which can respond very quickly to events relevant to design and technology,” senior curator of contemporary architecture, design and digital Kieran Long told Dezeen.

Items acquired under the scheme so far include the Katy Perry Lashes that Long examined in his most recent Opinion column for Dezeen, the first 3D-printed gun and a pair of jeans purchased from high-street retailer Primark that were made near the Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which collapsed earlier this year.

Whereas the museum has traditionally collected objects that have already earned their place in design history over time through their inclusion in books and exhibitions, this new strategy allows the curators to respond immediately to contemporary issues.

“We felt that the world works a little bit differently these days,” Long explained. “There are global events that take place and have a bearing on the world of design and manufacturing, which give certain objects a certain relevance at that moment.”

The strategy is being shown for the first time through an exhibition at the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture.

Long and colleague Corinna Gardner invited Shenzhen citizens to choose an everyday object that could tell a visitor something important about present-day Shenzhen. “These objects together tell a story about that city in this moment and offer a broader, more wide-ranging portrait of one of the most interesting, fast-changing cities in the world today,” said Gardner.

One of the objects on show is a bra without underwire. “Shenzhen is the electronic manufacturing hub of the world and many of the factory workers are female,” Gardner said. She explained that security checks on the way in and out of the factory usually involve a metal detector so workers choose to wear non-underwired bras in order to avoid beeping on the way through and having to undergo a physical search, where there is a a high rate of abuse.

“For me, the idea that a non-underwired bra is a valued currency in Shenzhen is a design narrative that tells you about the sexual politics of manufacturing in that city,” added Gardner.

One of the benefits of this new approach is that the museum preserves objects that have little value and would therefore otherwise disappear.

“Sometimes it can be these very banal objects that can go away and are impossible to retrieve, because lots of valuable things are kept by people,” said Long. “The kinds of things that Corinna [Gardner] was collecting in Shenzhen, if you tried to do that in two years time, you wouldn’t find those things. They would have gone because the city changes so fast.”

The exhibition continues in Shenzhen as part of the Biennale until February. From April the V&A will dedicate a new space in its twentieth-century galleries at the museum in London to displaying objects they’ve collected with the Rapid Response approach.

Long joined the V&A at the beginning of this year following a career in architecture journalism and a role as assistant director to David Chipperfield at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. In his first Opinion column for Dezeen, he called for an overhaul of the way design is curated in the twenty-first century and set out “95 Theses” for contemporary curation.

Here’s an edited transcript of the interview with Kieran Long:

Rose Etherington: What is rapid response curating?

Kieran Long: The rapid response collecting strategy is a new strand to the V&A museum’s collections policy, which can respond very quickly to events relevant to design and technology. The traditional way that the V&A collects objects is based on the idea that an object would prove its value over time by becoming a part of design history, being frequently cited in books and so on. These ways of proving an item’s value obviously take time.

We felt that the world works a little bit differently these days. There are global events that take place and have a bearing on the world of design and manufacturing, which give certain objects a certain relevance at that moment.

Rose Etherington: Can you give me an example?

Kieran Long: One example I have here in my office is a pair of Primark jeans. These jeans were made around the Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which collapsed in April this year, killing a thousand people. Those Primark jeans wouldn’t usually enter our fashion collections. Knowing that they were made in that factory, however, gives them a particular relevance and tells us something about contemporary manufacturing and about building codes in Bangladesh, about western consumerism, about lots of issues.

We thought that if we had those jeans in the museum, the day after that event, there’s something very visceral about that and the object’s ability to tell that story.

Rose Etherington: Was acquiring the 3D-printed gun an early application of this strategy?

Kieran Long: 

When Cody Wilson released the plans of the gun online, that was the moment that design changed. If we had had the rapid response strategy then, we would have printed one the next day probably and just got it on display immediately.

Rose Etherington: What else would you file under rapid response?

Kieran Long: This year The Telegraph newspaper ran some stories about working conditions in Tesco distribution warehouses. One of the things that they were talking about were the WT4000 wearable devices manufactured by Motorola that people in their distribution warehouses would wear. Basically they measure how many times you put something in a box on a production line.

Whenever I show this product, people are shocked that we think of wearable technology as the lovely things that you publish on Dezeen like Nike Fuel bands. Actually wearable technology is a reality for thousands of working people in this country. It’s a kind of neo-Fordist, time and motion study-type device that means people can get fired if they don’t put enough things in a box. A brilliant piece of industrial design but also a very frightening one.

Rose Etherington: What does this mean for the role of the curator?

Kieran Long: I don’t think it’s really any different to any traditional role of the expert curator in some ways. We are not stopping anybody from collecting in any way that the V&A has always collected. It’s just about moving more quickly and responding to events in the world. 
We have the tremendous luxury of being paid to develop rigorous world-class expertise about the objects that we collect.

I think that time and that investment we put into the expertise should also be focused not just on beautiful objects by famous designers and by leading artists, but also we should be looking at views of social and cultural change about manufacturing, about global supply chains, about things that really are a part of design and manufacturing that affect the lives of many people all over the world.

Rose Etherington: Does it also mean looking in other places for objects to collect than a curator traditionally would?

Kieran Long: Yes. It’s quite interesting, every time I talk about rapid response collecting internally, you find that some people in the history of the V&A museum have always done it this way. In 1989 when the Iron Curtain came down there was a big moment when the prints collection here collected a whole range of propaganda posters for the ex-USSR and the GDR and so on because they had the understanding that these things would disappear.

With the removal of that barrier, this Russian propaganda stuff became very important, so we now have one of the few complete collections in the world of propaganda posters and this kind of material. That was brilliant thinking, very reactive and very timely.

Rose Etherington: How will the objects collected with the rapid response method be displayed within the V&A museum?

Kieran Long: From April 2014 we’ll have a modest space by the twentieth-century galleries. We’ll have six cases that we will be able to use for these objects. People will come in and see things that have been in the news, things that have just rolled off the production line and been made into prototypes.

Rose Etherington: Do you think that the V&A’s future visitors will want to see Primark jeans?

Kieran Long: One of the things you realise when you work in an institution like the V&A, with 160 years of history, is you do think about the long term and I really believe people will look back and want to find a pair of Primark jeans in our collection. I really believe that. They will look back in the archives and newspapers and they will know the size of that business and the dominant position they have on the high street. Sometimes it can be these very banal objects that can go away and are impossible to retrieve, because lots of valuable things are kept by people.

The kinds of things that Corinna [Gardner] was collecting in Shenzhen, if you tried to do that in two years time, you wouldn’t find those things. They would have gone because the city changes so fast. Things are very fragile and not given value by people. What a great role for a museum to keep safe the things that might not otherwise be safe.

Rose Etherington: How does this fit into the V&A museum’s history?

Kieran Long: The museum itself is very self-consciousness about the way it does collect and document it’s own history. Hopefully people will look back and say there was this moment when the V&A got this new team with Kieran Long, Corinna Gardner, Louise Shannon and Rory Hyde and they all sat around and they had this new idea. They all stuck around for five or ten years and here is the group of things that they collected.

There are examples of that throughout the museum’s history. The famous circulation department of the 1950s and 1960s were collecting contemporary things in a really innovative way and that department was closed and integrated into other departments, but people are now doing PhDs about their work. They hold them up as an innovative, leading-edge group of thinkers at that time. Of course we aspire to that and we’re ambitious, and we want to be a part of this great museum’s history.

Rose Etherington: What about picking things which seem a good idea at the time but history processes otherwise?

Kieran Long: 

We may be wrong on some decisions but as long as we’re rigorous and careful and we follow our own parameters, it will have interest.

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of new “rapid response collecting” strategy appeared first on Dezeen.

Le studio Fuksas avait remporté en 2008 la compétition concernant la réalisation d’un nouveau terminal 3 de l’Aéroport international de Shenzhen Bao’an. C’est aujourd’hui que ce nouvel espace aux lignes surprenantes et futuristes sera ouvert au public. Un projet visuellement impressionnant à découvrir dans la suite.

News: OMA has completed the Shenzhen Stock Exchange – a skyscraper with a skirt at the heart of the city’s Central Business District (+ slideshow).

As one of OMA‘s best-known designs, the 250-metre skyscraper nicknamed “the miniskirt” features a three-storey podium that has been elevated 36 metres above the ground to sit around the body of the tower, creating a sheltered public plaza below and a roof garden on top.

This suspended structure provides the large trading rooms of the stock exchange, which are framed behind a sequence of zigzagging trusses that contrast with the grid of square windows on the building’s main facades.

“The Shenzhen Stock Exchange embodies the Pearl River Delta’s phenomenal transformation over the past thirty years,” commented Rem Koolhaas, whose firm won a competition to design the building back in 2006.

He said: “We are greatly excited about the building from an architectural standpoint, but I believe its true significance emerges when viewed in an economic, political, and ultimately social context. We are immensely honoured to contribute to Shenzhen’s twenty-first century landscape.”

“It is exciting to see OMA’s extensive research on Shenzhen materialise as a building in the city,” added OMA partner David Gianotten. “The experience of building in Shenzhen further informs our vision for the future of the city. SZSE has a simple and powerful concept – it transcends a generic form into an innovative prospect through the simple gesture of lifting the podium.”

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange is OMA’s second major project to complete in China, following the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing.

The firm is also now working on a second Shenzhen tower – the 180-metre Essence Financial Building.

See more architecture by OMA »
See more architecture in Shenzhen »

Photography is by Philippe Ruault.

Here are some extra details from OMA:

OMA completes the Shenzhen Stock Exchange HQ in China

The new headquarters for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) has been completed in Shenzhen’s Central Business District. The 180,000 m2 building is OMA’s next completed building in China after the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing.

Defying the conventional building typology of tower-on-podium, SZSE’s three-storey base is cantilevered 36m above the ground, allowing for a generous public space below and a lush roof garden on top. The raised podium contains the listing hall and offices of the Stock Exchange; in its elevated position, it can “broadcast” the activities of the stock market to the entire city.

While the generic square form of the tower blends in with the surrounding homogenous buildings, the façade of SZSE is differentiated through its materiality: a translucent layer of patterned glass wraps the tower grid and raised podium, rendering the façade mysterious and enigmatic, while revealing the construction behind. The façade changes continually with the weather, becoming a reflection of its environment.

The SZSE project was led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, and associate Michael Kokora, in collaboration with partners Ellen van Loon and Shohei Shigematsu.

Construction was overseen by OMA Asia’s Hong Kong office and OMA’s on-site office in Shenzhen, working day-to-day with the client and contractors throughout the construction process. OMA’s team consisted of over 75 architects at various points in the design and construction phases.

SZSE was developed in collaboration with the local design institute SADI, and consultants DHV, Inside Outside, L&B and Arup. OMA won the competition for SZSE in 2006 and construction began in October 2008. OMA is currently designing a number of other buildings in China, including the Tencent Headquarters in Beijing and the Prince Bay Masterplan in Shenzhen.

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Shenzhen Stock Exchange appeared first on Dezeen.

Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has developed a concept to introduce natural ecosystems into cities with designs for “farmscrapers” made from piles of giant glass pebbles for a site in Shenzhen, China (+ slideshow).

As a response to the rapid urbanisation going on in the country, Vincent Callebaut wanted to completely rethink the current structure of cities and do away with suburbs. “The more a city is dense, the less it consumes energy,” he explains.

He continues: “The challenge is to create a fertile urbanisation with zero carbon emissions and with positive energy. This means producing more energy that it consumes, in order to conciliate the economical development with the protection of the planet.”

The architect proposes a new type of urban habitat based on the rules of the natural world, with stacks of giant pebbles housing entire communities. All energy would be sourced from the sun and wind, anything produced would be recyclable and local expertise would be capitalised wherever possible.

Residents of each tower would also work there, reducing the need to travel. All food and commodities would be produced within the building, in suspended orchards and vegetables gardens, plus all waste would be fed back into the ecosystem.

“The garden is no more placed side by side to the building; it is the building!” says Callebaut. “The architecture becomes cultivable, eatable and nutritive.”

Entitled Asian Cairns, Callebaut’s proposals are for a series of six towers, with some containing as many as 20 glazed “pebbles”. A steel structure would create the curved shapes, while solar panels and wind turbines would be mounted onto the outer surfaces.

The project was commissioned by private Chinese investors.

Vincent Callebaut has developed a number of conceptual architecture projects in recent years. In 2010 he revealed a conceptual transport system involving airships powered by seaweed and has also been working on a tower with the same structure as a DNA strand.

See more architecture proposals in China, including a Zaha Hadid-designed cultural complex in Changsha and a pair of opposing museums in Tianjin by Steven Holl.

Here’s a lot of extra information from Vincent Callebaut:

Sustainable Farmscrapers for Rural Urbanity, Shenzhen, China

From Rural Exodus to Chinese Urban Biosphere

At the end of 2011 in China, the number of inhabitants in the cities exceeded the number of inhabitants in the countryside. Whereas 30 years ago only one Chinese person out of five lived in the city, the city-dwellers represent now 51.27% of the total population of 1 347 billion of people. This urban population is supposed to increase to 800 million of inhabitants within 2020 spread mainly in 221 cities of at least one million of inhabitants (versus only 40 in Europe of the same scale) and 23 megapolis of more that five million of inhabitants.

According to Li Jianmin, an expert in demography from the Tianjin University, the Chinese population will be urban at 75% within 2030! Facing this massive rural exodus and the unrestrained acceleration of the urbanisation, the future models of the – green, dense and connected – cities must be rethought from now on! The challenge is to create a fertile urbanisation with zero carbon emissions and with positive energy, this means producing more energy that it consumes, in order to conciliate the economical development with the protection of the planet. The standard of living of everyone will thus be increased by respecting at the same time the standard of living of everybody.

The green city

The cities are currently responsible for 75% of the worldwide consumption of energy and they reject 80% of worldwide emissions of CO2. The contemporary urban model is thus ultra-energy consuming and works on the importation of wealth and natural resources on the one hand, and on the exportation of the pollution and waste on the other hand. This loop of energetic flows can be avoided by repatriating the countryside and the farming production modes in the heart of the city by the creation of green lungs, farmscrapers in vertical storeys and by the implantation of wind and solar power stations. The production sites of food and energy resources will be thus reintegrated in the heart of the consumption sites! The buildings with positive energies must become the norm and reduce the carbon print on the mid term.

The dense city

The model of main contemporary cities advocating the urban spread and based on the mono-functionality and the social segregation, must be rejected! Actually, the more a city is dense, the less it consumes energy. This is the end of ultra secured ghettos of rich people against quarters of huge poverty! This is the end of bedroom suburbs without any activity alternating with uniform commercial area and without any inhabitant! This is the end of museum city centres fighting against monofunctional business districts. This is the end of embolism of the all-car eating away the city centres! This is the end of the explosion of public and private transports devouring our lands because based on an obsolete geographical separation of housing and work! The social diversity and the functional diversity must be the key words to build more intelligent cities! Ecologically more viable, the dense, vertical and less spread city will constitute an attractive open pole and offering many services. The social will be reinvented!

The connected city

The information and communication technologies have now a major role in the development of city network and will be able to reduce the carbon emissions from 15 and 20% within 2020. The communication solutions such as the optic fibre and the satellite systems enable already thanks to their associated applications (videoconference, telecommuting, telemedicine, video surveillance, e-commerce, real time information, etc.). to reduce considerably the carbon emissions and to save the travel costs by reinforcing at the same time the economical dynamism and the attractiveness of the cities.

Based on innovation, the TIC solutions favour the diminution of physical goods and means of transport via the dematerialization. They empower also a clever logistics and a synchronisation of the production operations. Everything tends to new opportunities of profitable growth and to a saving with low carbon print. The sustainable development must thus enable to find innovative solutions for an economy resilient to climatic changes which is in total harmony with the biosphere in order to preserve the capabilities of the future generations to meet their needs.

The Biomorphism, the Bionic and the Biomimicry at the Service of the Renaturalisation of the City

The oldest living beings appeared 3.8 billion years ago. In terms of durability, the human societies are thus far behind the nature that made its proofs. If only 1% of the species survived by adapting themselves constantly without hypothecate the future generation and without any fuel, their subsistence merits the respect and reminds us the laws of their prosperity:

» The Nature works mainly with solar energy.
» It uses only the quantity of energy it needs.
» It adjusts the shape to the function.
» It recycles everything.
» It bets on the biodiversity.
» It limits the excess from the interior.
» It transforms the constraints into opportunities.
» It transforms waste into natural resources.
» It enhances the local expertise.

Based on these billions of years of Research and Development, new innovation approaches aiming at modifying the carbon balance, guide us to three additional scales operated by the contemporary biotechnologies: the shapes, the strategies and the ecosystems.

The Biomorphism is based only on shapes from the Nature, e.g. the vertical wings of the Steppes Eagle, the spiralling and hydro-dynamical shape of the nautilus, the ventilation of the termite mounds.

The Bionics is based on living strategies, natural manufacturing processes, e.g. the plasticity of the lilypads, the hyper-resistant structure of the hives in bee nests.

The Biomimicry is based on mature ecosystems and tends to reproduce all the interactions present in a tropical forest such as: the use of waste as resources, the diversification and the cooperation, the reduction of the materials at their strict minimum, e.g. the autogenerative agriculture, the reproduction of the photosynthesis process (main energy source of humanity), the production of bio-hydrogen from green algae.

Whereas the primary reason of architecture is since time immemorial to protect Man against Nature, the contemporary city desires by its emergent methods to reconciliate finally Man and the natural ecosystems! The architecture becomes metabolic and creative! The facades become as intelligent, regenerative and organic epidermis. They are matters in movement, recovered by free plants and adjust always the shape to the functionality. The roofs become the new grounds of the green city. The garden is no more placed side by side to the building; it is the building! The architecture becomes cultivable, eatable and nutritive. The architecture is no more set up in the ground but is planted into the earth and exchanges with it the organic matters changed in natural resources.

Asian Cairns, Towards a New Model of Smart City

Benefiting from its privileged geographical position in the heart of the Chinese megalopolis of the Delta of the Pearl River, Shenzhen faces a spectacular economic and demographic development. Since the return of Hong Kong to China, both cities have been merging together and constitute now one of the greatest Chinese metropolises with more than 20 billions of inhabitants! In this context of hyper growth and accelerated urbanism, the “Asian Cairns” project fights for the construction of an urban multifunctional, multicultural and ecological pole. It is an obvious project to build a prototype of green, dense, Smart city connected by the TIC and eco-designed from biotechnologies!

Three interlaced eco-spirals

The master plan is designed under the shape of three interlaced spirals that represent the 3 elements which are fire, earth and water, all organised around air in the middle. Each spiral curls up around two magalithic towers and forms urban ecosystems implanting the biodiversity in the heart of the City under the shape of vast public orchards and urban agriculture fields. Huge basins of viticulture and vast lagoons of phyto-puration recycle the grey waters rejected by the inhabited vertical farms.

Six multifunctional farmscrapers

The six gardening towers engraved in a Golden Triangle pile up a mixed programmation superimposing farmingscrapers cultivated by their own inhabitants. Like our Dragonfly project in New York, the aim is to repatriate the countryside in the city and to reintegrate the food production modes into the consumption sites. The megalithic towers are based on cairns, artificial stone heap present on the mountains to mark out the hiker tracks. Clever exploits of the construction, these six towers pile up housing, offices, leisure spaces in the monolithic pebbles superimposed on each other along a vertical central boulevard. This central boulevard constitutes the structural framework of each tower. It choreographs the human flows, distributes the natural resources and digests the waste by sorting and selective composting. True city quarter piling up mixed blocks, these cairns make the urban space denser by optimising also the quality of life of its inhabitants by the reduction of means of transport, the implantation of a home automation network, the re-naturalisation of the public and private spaces and the integration of clean renewable energies.

These six farmscrapers are pioneer towers aiming at the 10 following objectives:

1. The diminution of the ecological footprint of this new vertical eco-quarter enhancing the local consumption by its food autonomy and by the reduction of means of road, rail and river transport.
2. The reintegration of local employment in the primary and secondary sectors coproducing the fresh and organic products to the city dwellers who will be able to reappropriate the knowledge of the farming production modes.
3. The recycling in short and closed loop of the liquid or solid organic waste of the used waters by anaerobe composting and green algae panels producing biogas by accelerated photosynthesis.
4. The economy of the rural territory reducing the deforestation, the desertification and the pollution of the phreatic tables.
5. The oxygenation of the polluted city centres whose air quality is saturated in lead particles.
6. The production of a vertical organic agriculture of fruits and vegetables limiting the systematic recourse to pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.
7. The saving of water resource by the recycling of urban waters, spraying waters and the evapo-sweated water by the plants.
8. The protection of the biodiversity and the development of eco-systemic cycles in the heart of the city.
9. The diminution of the sanitary risks by the disappearance of pesticides noxious for the health and by the fertility and total protection of the phreatic tables.
10. The diminution of the recourse to fossil fuel needed for the conventional agriculture in long cycle for the refrigeration and the transport of the goods.

Hundred of bioclimatic pebbles with positive energy

Each pebble is a true eco-quarter of this new model of vertical city. Structurally, they are made of steel rings which arch around the horizontal double-decks. These rings are linked to the central spinal column by Vierendeel beams that enable a maximum of flexibility and spatial modularity. These huge beams form a plan in cross that welcomes the individual programmation of each pebble. The interstitial spaces between this cross and the megalith skin welcome great nutritive suspended gardens under the shape of farming greenhouses.

True living stones playing from their overhanging position, the crystalline pebbles are eco designed from renewable energies. An open-air epidermis of photovoltaic and photo thermal solar cells as well as a forest of axial wind turbines covers the zenithal roofs punctuated by suspended orchards and vegetable gardens. Each pebble presents thus a positive energetic balance on the electrical hand and also on the calorific or food hand.

The “Asian Cairns” project syntheses our architectural philosophy that transforms the cities in ecosystems, the quarters in forests and the buildings in mature trees changing thus each constraint in opportunity and each waste in renewable natural resource!

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Vincent Callebaut appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Rem Koolhaas’ OMA has won a competition to design a financial office tower in Shenzhen, China, the firm’s second building in the city after the soon-to-complete Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Located in the city’s business district, the 180-metre Essence Financial Building will be cut into two by a large outdoor terrace that will slice horizontally though the facade to open up a view of the nearby Shenzhen Golf Club.

Circulation routes will be sidelined to the edge of the floorplates, creating flexible office plans that can be adapted to suit different layouts and alternative uses.

Each facade will be designed in relation to the movements of the sun, as a deliberate move to minimise solar gain. East and west facades will be the most screened, while the south facade will feature graduated openings and the north facade will have the largest windows.

David Gianotten, partner in charge of OMA Asia, commented: “OMA is very excited about its continuous and deepening participation in Shenzhen’s development, especially as the city makes its latest evolution: from a manufacturing city into a services hub. This next generation of urbanism calls for a new generation of office towers of which the Essence Financial Building could be one.”

OMA’s first project in the city, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is set for completion in April. Other recent projects by the Dutch firm include plans to redevelop Sydney’s Darling Harbour and a range of furniture for American furniture brand Knoll.

See more architecture and design by OMA, including a series of movies we filmed with partners Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf and Iyad Alsaka at the opening of the OMA/Progress exhibition in 2011.

Here’s a statement from OMA:

OMA has won the design competition for the Essence Financial Building in Shenzhen. The project, led by OMA Partners David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas, and designed as a new generation office tower for Shenzhen, was selected from entries by four competing international and Chinese architectural practices.

The Essence Financial Building, located in the Financial Developement Area of Shenzhen, reflects on how the emergent forces in business and society could shape a contemporary office tower typology. The building challenges the many conventions that govern office tower designs, in particular the prevailing central core plan and curtain wall systems.

The Essence Financial Building shifts its core to the edge of the floor plate, resulting in large unobstructed plans that allow a variety of office configurations – and therefore working styles – that meet the demands of the contemporary services industry. Direct and open additional connections between floors can be created to cater for visual and physical contact between departments. The building rationalizes programs into unique volumes, which are then maneuvered to create the distinct form of the building, as well as a viewing platform overlooking the Shenzhen Golf Club, and shaded outdoor recreational spaces for staff.

Above: section – click above for larger image

The facade of the building is an architectural translation of the sun and solar gain diagrams, as well as to the views from each side of the tower. Each face thus takes on a unique pattern. The East and West facades are less penetrable, in response to the low-hitting sun, while the south facade has graduated openings the size of the windows increases down the building in proportion to the decrease of solar penetration. The north facade opens toward Fuhua First Road.

The project was developed together with SADI, YRG, SWA, Inhabit and AECOM.

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Shenzhen skyscraper appeared first on Dezeen.