The Park Era experience Centre is located within the northeast area of the Ankang High-Tech District. Being located on a traffic intersection, the building’s western and southern facades serve as major urban interfaces. A grand canopy extends out on the west and south sides of the building allowing a strong sense of horizontality, not only creating a series of under-canopy grey spaces, but also a wide terrace at the upper level. This strategy reinforces the expression of the two interfaces. 

The main body of the building is enveloped with a glass curtain wall, giving the impression of a crystal cube. Through out the day, sunlight or artificial lighting irradiates building in different ways, combined with the glass that reflects the city and the courtyard, whilst revealing the interior scene of the building. These visual effects become overlapped, giving the architectural skin a kind of uncertain illusory beauty. In addition, the courtyard landscape uses the water as a mirror to produce a stunning mirrored reflection. The entire place feels like a stage with light and shadow creating both an unpredictable and serene atmosphere. As a temporary building, the Park Era Experience Centre has a designed service life of only 3-5 years. Thus to achieve rapid construction at a low cost, a steel structure has been utilized for the main body of the building. Modularized design is adopted to allow an integrated control over the curtain wall system, structural system and indoor space using 300mm moduli. In order to create a transparent and welcoming environment within the first floor reception area, every 2400mm width is considered as a compositional unit which contains a 300m-wide recessed window and a 2100mm-wide fixed glass. The second floor is used primarily as office space so the width of glass curtain wall unit is halved for better privacy. The opening windows are hidden within the recessed strips, ensuring the purity of the glass facade. The modularization and detailing of the curtain wall not only creates a strong rhythm, but also coordinates the relationship between the façade, indoor column grid and partition walls.

Completion Year: 2020
Gross Built Area: 1,600 sqm
Project location: Ankang Avenue, Ankang, Shaanxi, China