Hangzhou is striding from the West Lake Era to the Qiantang River Era. The New Century City, together with the Qiantang Central Business District, aim to become the new centre of a large Metropolitan Hangzhou, as a result of the integration of Binjiang, Xiaoshan and Xiasha Districts with the present city.
The new Wanxiang Multifunctional Block will be a new focal point on the Century City Area and one of the new landmarks of Hangzhou new city centre, an icon amongst the different expressions of verticality of the new district.
The three towers are placed in the south cross of Shixin and Shizheng Road, and connected to the Subway exit. The connectivity of the project with the complex urban flows is one of the main premises to take into consideration.
The floor plans are designed to maximize efficiency and versatility to hold the different program requirements –office and hotel. As a result, the three buildings are rectangular shaped refusing formalism and design gesture.
The iconic value is given by the treatment of the facade, based on the idea of a vanishing tower that dematerializes upwards fading the limits of the building with the sky.
A screen printed glass facade gives shape to the dematerialization by losing density from the ground upwards, turning the buildings from a bright-white, abstract skin on the lower levels into a glass facade that fades with the sky at its top.
The white stripped printed glass pieces are arranged with different densities, from a 50% transparency at the lower levels until 100%. To reinforce the effect of dematerialization, the facade overtakes the height of the building with a light glazed veil that blurs the tangible limits of the building.
The public sky yards and other public areas are shown as a series of transparent areas carved out of the building mass, introducing some variations in the facade.
At night, the white stripes are light with a system based on LED technology, expressing the effect of dematerialization from the bottom to the top.
BOEE Multifunctional block will be one more of the new towers in project for the New Century City Area, south-east bank of Qian Tang River, in front of Hangzhou new Central Business District. The two banks of the river aim to become the new center of Hangzhou city, where recent high rise buildings and new facilities projects are trying to inject new life. Our proposal consists on the rising of an alternative icon to be unique amongst the different expressions of verticality of the new district. BOEE Urban Incubator will be a new focal point on the area together with the two highest landmarks set up with that purpose on the Century City Urban Plan.
The stacked boxes of the new BOEE Urban Incubator are an expression of the programmatic complexity for the new mixed use development: offices, shops, luxury apartments, facilities and BOEE new headquarters. Each program parcel is contained in a different box and stacked in a position determined by its particular views, orientation and representativeness requirements: the apartments are placed in the higher levels, taking advantage of the views and orientation, while retail and offices are placed in the lower levels. BOEE Headquarters are stacked over the public offices, offering the representativeness needed by the developer company.
Offices allow flexible partitioning to suit market trends and customer needs, ranging from 50sqm offices to over 300sqm. The smallest units are placed along the north facade while the medium and larger offices face south orientation. Apartments are arranged in four different configurations –TP1 to TP4-, offering five different 400sqm apartment types, each one divisible in smaller units. All the living rooms and master bedrooms face south-west and enjoy river views. The luxury Club House in the 11th floor creates a leisure space of exclusivity for the owners, providing facilities such as fitness center, swimming pool, SPA, club bar, kindergarten and business center. The Club House can be opened also to the users of the offices and the Headquarters, offering the rental of meeting rooms in different configurations, ranging from 16 people boardroom to 50 people classroom and cocktail style rooms.
Chinese traditional architecture is present on the facades layout, consisting on a latticed structural system that links the shared Chinese and Spanish tradition of the lattice and the contemporary demand of a new urban icon. The galleries, pointed also as one of the most characteristic elements of traditional Chinese architecture, are used on the Headquarters, apartments and club house areas to provide a buffering zone between the inside and the city. Galleries help the users to control the solar irradiation and the noise, as well as they offer multiple circulations and filter areas such as tea rooms and verandas in the apartments or resting and meeting areas in the offices. The latticed facade confers a unitary image to the whole block, expression of the versatility of the different boxes. The structural system consists on a central concrete core where elevators and stairs are placed, combined with the concrete latticed facade, without any interior columns. The concrete structure is tiled with natural stone cladding. A big porch is used as the reception area in the first floor, and provides access to the main obbies of towers I and II. The nine meters high lobbies contains reception and lounge areas. The commercial arcade is designed in accordance with the rest of the building. Besides the shopping areas attached to the lobbies of towers I and II, two low rise buildings contain the main retail area and are used to shelter the access ramps to the parking placed in the three basements. Shops areas range from 150sqm to 500sqm.
A landscaped plaza, opened to the adjacent streets, combines green and water areas within a modern original pattern in keeping with the blurry effect created of the latticed facades. A central shallow lake occupies the core of the landscape area articulating the cars circulation, while several scattered gentle slopes are used to filter the relation with the surrounding roads and to provide a natural atmosphere to the opened plaza. A striking multicolored pavement is used to arrange both cars and pedestrians circulations.
