Program: 290,000sqm Office Building and Retail Development

Location: ChengDu, China

Client: :  Jinniu district market development and service center

Collaborators: Shenzhen General Institute of Architectural Design and Research, FLVR Studio
Year: 2012
Status: Competition Entry (Invited)

With two sites, two retail podiums and three towers, our primary design intent was to unify the various programs, buildings, and parcels into a single and cohesive identity.

Inspired by the flowing ribbons and choreographed movements of traditional Chinese Ribbon dances, our proposal for the Chengdu Lotus Pond Development seeks to recreated the elegance of the flowing ribbons and the notion of the projects form not as a collage of platonic objects, but rather as a choreographed composition of dancing surfaces which come together, peel apart, and are in constant yet synchronized movement.  Architecture emerges in the space between (both inside and outside) the choreographed surfaces.  The project is articulated as a collection of dynamic bands which simultaneously wrap the two podiums, connect the two sites (in the form of 3 connective sky bridges), define a unifying external courtyard and merge the horizontal (2 retail podiums) with the vertical (3 office towers).

The wrapping moves of the retail podiums articulate two opposing external courtyards which collectively form a single courtyard experience that starts at ground level at the pedestrian street and dips down to a lower ground level that spatially unifies the two sites visually at upper floors and literally at the ground and lower ground levels.