Shenzhen's Great Leap Forward

Basking in the radiated heat of the retail hot spot that is Hong Kong, Shenzhen is already identified as a well-established yet still rapidly expanding commercial and financial hub. The city is Southern China’s answer to Wall Street – a bustling embodiment of the unstoppable economic behemoth that is Chinese capitalism, and among the nation’s fastest growing cities for the past thirty years. But while the city itself surges ahead, the city’s greatest architectural milestones are now reminders of a bygone era – The International Trade Centre, once China’s tallest building, is a 1980s boom structure, and the world’s ninth tallest building, Shun Hing Square, built in 1996, no longer serves its purpose as an architectural landmark. So while Shenzhen has a well-formed functional identity among global financial and commercial circles, the city has become somewhat of a Plain Jane in the 21st-century architectural world. Until now. Yes, Shenzhen is about to get its very own economic architectural stimulus package, and then some.

In November 2007, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) began construction on a new Shenzhen Stock Exchange Headquarters, due for completion in 2010. But the Shenzhen Planning Bureau knew that one tower alone wasn’t enough, and thus began the ‘Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1’ competition. The search was on for a threedimensional unified urban plan centred around the SZSE, including four new office towers, as well as a complete catalogue of civic and social infrastructure. The first steps forward began in February 2009, when Steven Holl Architects was unanimously chosen as the winning masterplan entry, and four distinctive firms were chosen for each of the four towers: FCJZ Atelier for the Shenzhen Media Group (Tower A); Morphosis for China Construction Bank (Tower B); COOP HIMMELB(L)AU for the China Insurance Group (Tower C); and Hans Hollein for Southern & Bosera Funds (Tower D). Here, we look at the distinctive forms of the SZSE, Tower B and Tower C, and their role within Steven Holl Architects’ grand masterplan.

Steven Holl Architects: The Masterplan
Steven Holl Architects’ masterplan, like the competition that produced it, is primarily driven by the desire to integrate and unify, rather than autonomise and isolate as many Chinese highrise projects have done before. The stand-out feature is a raised Social Bracket, gathering the public programs from all four towers into a connecting area between the towers, the square, the city streets and pedestrian traffic: an interface between the business-centric area to the south and the residential area to the north. Here, gyms and cafeterias meld with art galleries, auditoriums and a cinema. A continuous roof garden park collects rainwater and recycles greywater from a central UV treatment system. The four ‘tropical skyscrapers’ are positioned around the square as a ‘shade machine’, with automatic solar tracking screens made of perforated PV cells that make a daily rotation around the circumference of each building, blocking the strongest rays, and collecting enough photovoltaic power to cool the towers completely. The guiding concept is that of a 3D Chinese puzzle as opposed to an isolated 2D footprint, where each individual project holds its own distinctive form within the interwoven fabric of the masterplan. It is a project that is greater than the sum of its parts, where society and environment come together within the context of structural and functional reinvention.

OMA: SZSE Tower
Let us now look deeper into the heart of this new financial hub: the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s reinvention of “China’s NASDAQ”, the Stock Exchange building itself. Due for completion in 2010, the 228-metre volume is articulated into a 45- storey tower mainly occupied by office functions arranged around a central core, and an 18-storey podium, raised 36 metres from ground level, and cantilevered. Fully connected to the tower structure, the podium and lower tower contain the dedicated Stock Exchange functions, with a number of dedicated purpose-oriented service floors located throughout the tower proper. The total floor area adds up to 200,000m2.

Now some would say that the global futures market is inherently unstable, risky and just as prone to crashes and tumbles as it is towering highs. Not necessarily strong themes with which to inspire an architectural creation. But for OMA, the stock market was the perfect symbol on which to base the new HQ for Shenzhen’s modern, almost virtual financial market. The stock market is fuelled by ambition and lofty aspirations, grounded not by the laws of gravity, but by the cold, hard capital. And so OMA conceived of a new architectural invention: a building with a floating base that doubles as a floating platform, which in liberating the main functions from the ground, also supports and launches them. The façade of the lifted podium uses the same patterned glass as the main volume but is clearly enunciated by a variance of scale, articulation and layering. The depth of the glass skin also makes way for an occupiable balcony between the recessed vision glass and the patterned glazing.

The tower itself combines two typologies: the window wall and the glass curtain wall. Structurally, it is a robust exoskeletal grid, overlaid first with a glass window wall and then a patterned glass skin, as delicate as Chinese silk, flirtatiously revealing the complexity of the structure beneath. Functionally, the glass is a simple yet highly efficient means of shading the transparent vision-panes from the harshest subtropical sunlight, negating the need for any additional exterior or interior shading. Aesthetically, the veil is the face and voice of the SZSE: as the light changes throughout the day and across the seasons, this elegant outermost skin creates for the tower a constantly shifting identity: sparkling in bright sunshine, glimmering in the rain, mute under a cloudy sky, glowing at dusk, and glowing at night.

Morphosis: Tower B/China Construction Bank
Morphosis takes its cue from OMA, in evading the laws of gravity and of typical 2-dimensional urban layout. Rather than limiting the usable urban spaces to the horizontal plane at street level, Tower B is interspersed from top to bottom with light-filled atria, exterior sky garden ‘slots’, and interior double-height sky plazas, creating atypical open spaces in which tenants and VIPs can traverse and communicate. These punctures also open up the centre of the building to natural ventilation and daylight, both of which consequently share an omniscient presence in Tower B. And while all of the tower’s tenants and guests share equally in this pervading atmosphere, the effect is no doubt heightened upon entering the four-storey penthouse and skygarden therein.

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Tower C/China Insurance Group
In the ‘green’ corner, we have COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’s design for the new China Insurance Group headquarters in Tower C, selected by the Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1 jury panel chaired by Mr Arata Isozaki. The project envisions a 200-metre, 49-storey high-rise volume, clearly articulated into a base building for public functions, and a vertically stacked tower for the private HQ office program. In the middle of the building are the semi-public elements – meeting rooms, conference centre, recreation areas and gardens – a concentrated public/private zone where all employees can come together and exchange knowledge and creative energy. It is this creative energy that also inspires the outer facade of the tower: a second skin continuously shaped and reshaped by both external climate forces and internal functions. Photovoltaic cells embedded in this outer layer use solar energy to generate electricity for use in the building, while other cells work to reduce excessive wind pressure, shade the sun, and create multimedia displays. Together with natural ventilation strategies, this climate-reactive façade places COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’s Tower C firmly in the ‘green’ corner of the Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1 project.

Going forward, the survival of the global economy is uncertain at best, cataclysmic at worst. Financially, markets will need to adapt if they are to survive such an economic epoch. In a physical sense, a successful market correction must also involve a rethinking of architectural priorities: a reconnection to context, environment and society. A return to reality, and a great leap forward into what is, for the most part, unknown, not to mention unknowable. In this sense, the Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1 project is a prototype for the financial hub of the future: a bold, intrepid project, and, most likely, a winning one at that. +

1 Steven Holl's design answered the Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1 competition call for four high-rise towers connected - physically, contextually and thematically - by civic open spaces, like a 3-dimensional puzzle. 2 The masterplan envisions a seamless connection between the outdoor public spaces and private office functions within each tower. 3 A simple statement: The SZSE can keep an eye on the stock price tickertape as it runs along the underside of the platform, an adaptation of the traditional stock market wall. 4 The Shenzhen Stock Exchange Tower is both the functional and physical heart of the fast-paced Shenzhen business district: a landmark for the city and also for China's economy. 5 Earthbound no longer: Tower B, designed by Morphosis, is punctuated with plazas, atria and gardens, taking social functions from ground level and transposing them onto the vertical plane.

IMAGES courtesy of Steven Holl, Steven Holl Architects, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Morphsis Architects, SILKROAD Digital Technology Co. LTD