Located in the Tongzhou district of Beijing, Urban Creek is an attempt at having architecture merge within various spheres of public space. Designed by ATOL Architects, the project is focuses around the idea that architecture should be conceived as a cultural connective tissue that creates opportunities to link spaces and neighborhoods together. In redefining the very notion of mixed-use from a free standing commercial box/podium/tower typology, this design aims at creating an ever evolving city center to reconnect with its secret past. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Downtown used to be a place of endless spatial encounters, social surprises and intellectual enlightenment where leisurely strolls could cross paths with business meetings. The recent acceleration of urban growth in heavily populated Asian cities has often erased all remaining traces of spatial, social and cultural permeabilities in their new and shining commercial development: the businessman, the global traveler, and the disaffected shopper are the only ones left in the commercial city center while the youth, student, artist, and all other cultural enablers have progressively been relegated to various suburban locations underground, all but invisible to the inhabitants of the corporate sphere.
Accelerating urban densification has nonetheless also opened the door to some rather new and refreshing typologies: the vertical city, the linear park, the artist’s village. Combining these with existing and valid urban typologies: opera house, cultural plaza, student dwellings, creative office, incubation spaces, hip hotel, and a residential community opens the door to an endless exploration of what the city today should be, and could be.
Through its formal deconstruction of the corporate spaces, Urban Creek takes a hard look at unifying the broken spaces created and left over after the great urban revolution of the 21st century.
Architects: ATOL Architects Location: Tongzhou district, Beijing, China Partner-in-charge: Li-An Tsien Partner: Giovanni Pulcioni Design Team: Li-An Tsien, Giovanni Pulcioni, Jung Guee Um, Jean Garcin, Patrick Candalla, Jenny Chang, Céline Campion, Michael Lewis, Brad Hooks, Hyuk Lee, Stefan Delvoye, Anais Legrand, Tim Dickel, Eduardo Hidalgo, Jessica Lee, Nathaniel Gough Program: opera house, cultural plaza, creative offices, artist village, linear park, hip hotel, five-star hotel, grade A office tower, serviced apartment, residential community, shopping malls Status: Extended Preliminary Design Site Area: 94,940 m2 Program Area: 428,245 m2 Above Ground: 305,392 m2 Below Ground: 122,894 m2 Parking Area: 215,569 m2 Overall Gross Floor Area: 643,814 m2
