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Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has updated their progress on the Unicorn Island tech hub development in Chengdu, China. The 165.5-acre project delivers worker housing and office/research space for 70,000. Buildings are arranged in clusters and established "organically" along a radial distribution... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Architects has shared photos and a video to coincide with this month's inauguration of its new Chengdu Science Fiction Museum project in China. The culmination of the firm’s now 15-year-long foray into the country that has produced multiple science and cultural sector designs in... View full entry
Construction has commenced on the MVRDV-designed Chengdu Jiaozi Courtyard Towers in the city’s financial district. The mixed-use complex comprises three office towers and a conference center sitting atop a ring-shaped plinth, with an architectural language that “recalls the traditional... View full entry
The next major cultural project from Zaha Hadid Architects has been revealed after the firm published the first images of its under-construction Chengdu Science Fiction Museum to coincide with the announcement that it will play host to the Hugo Awards later this year. In the form of a solar... View full entry
Researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab have produced a series of maps visualizing commuting habits across Chinese cities. Titled Potato Project, the study used mobile phone location data from 50 million individuals across 234 cities to understand commuting patterns between a person’s home... View full entry
Touted as the world’s first renewable energy-powered, suspended sky train, a new transportation system has been unveiled in Chengdu, the capital city of China’s southwest Sichuan Province. Photo: CCTV The project, titled the Dayi Air Rail Project, is a first-of-its-kind demonstration... View full entry
Powerhouse Company's design for a new technology museum and reception center in Chengdu, China combines recreation with thoughtful exhibition. Conceived as a continuous ring, the Loop of Wisdom embodies an organic and geometric archetype of fluidity and flexibility. The new museum and... View full entry
An experimental green housing project in a Chinese megacity promised prospective residents life in a "vertical forest", with manicured gardens on every balcony. [...]
The problem? The mosquitoes love the plants, too. [...]
Without any tenants to care for them, the eight towers have been overrun by their own plants - and invaded by mosquitoes.
— The Telegraph
Zaha Hadid Architects' 67-hectare “Unicorn Island” masterplan in Chengdu is slowly beginning to take shape with the near-completion of its first building, a start-up exhibition and conference center. The masterplan's catchy name “Unicorn Island” might make it sound like some sort of... View full entry
It might sound like a plot cooked up by a cartoon villain, but a city in southwestern China is aiming to launch into space an artificial moon that could replace streetlights by bathing the ground in a “dusk-like glow.”
[...] the satellite’s mirror-like exterior would reflect sunlight down to Earth, creating a glow about eight times brighter than the moon. The artificial moon, which he said would orbit about 500 kilometers above Earth, could save $174 million in electricity from streetlights.
— NBC News
The capital of China's Sichuan province, Chengdu, could have its own illumination satellite 'moon' up in the skies by 2020, according to the People's Daily. Light pollution, and its documented health effects on humans and nocturnal wildlife, doesn't seem to be much of a concern to the officials... View full entry
A 100m tall cliff-face of blue mirrored glass, stretching 500m along a triumphal plaza, the New Century Global Centre houses an entire seaside resort, along with a 14-screen Imax cinema, Olympic-sized ice rink, two five-star hotels and its own Mediterranean shopping village – all wrapped with a vast ribbon of offices. Sprawling for 1.7m square metres, it could fit 20 Sydney Opera Houses beneath its glass roof. — guardian.co.uk
Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas have won the international competition for the construction of the first cultural center in the city of Chengdu. This city is the capital of Sichuan province and was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2008. Studio Fuksas has other projects still going on in China and... View full entry
If you dig a hole deep enough... is an installation by New York architects LEVENBETTS for The Solutions, the 2011 Chengdu Arts and Design Biennial, currently running through October 30 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.
The impetus for LEVENBETTS' installation was the children’s adage in America that says that if you dig a hole in the ground deep enough you will emerge on the other side of the earth in China.
— bustler.net
"People paid a lot of attention to these buildings because they cost too much money - money that should have been used where it was needed most," said resident Xu Linli as she walked home from work past the controversial office complex. — BBC News
In 2004, French architect Paul Andreu - who designed Beijing's stunning egg-shaped national theatre, won the right to design a new office complex for Chengdu government officials. Two months after the move began, the Sichuan earthquake, whose epicentre was just north of Chengdu, left... View full entry
