Raffles City / UNStudio
UNStudio‘s new mixed-use Raffles City is situated near the Qiangtan River in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, China. This Raffles City marks CapitaLand’s sixth large-scale shopping center, including those in Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Bahrain. For UNStudio’s design, a sleek twisting tower will provide residential and hotel accommodates in its 300,000 square meter total floor area. The project aims to highlight the area and attract visitors, “In the chain of events and attractions of Hangzhou, like the West Lake area and the commercial centre, the Raffles City project will be at the core of the Qianjiang New Town area and contribute to the recognition of this area as a new destination in the city,” explained the architects.
More about Raffles City and more images after the break.
philosophy behind the Raffles City concept is to integrate mixed use in an urban context, but in such a way as to give this concept a twist; by focusing on where the urban context meets the landscape of the city. In the design of the towers the urban element of the project twists towards the landscape, whilst the landscape aspect, in turn, twists towards the urban context, thereby effecting the incorporation and consolidation of these separate elements in one formal gesture,” explained Ben van Berkel.
After four years of planning and construction, Raffles City Hangzhou will reach a height of 60 stories, presenting views both to and from the Qiantang River and West Lake areas. UNStudio also focused on environmentally-friendly building materials, energy efficiency and the reduction of material demands in an effort for the structure to achieve a gold rating by LEED standards.
The project is due for realisation in 2012.
Image courtesy UNstudio. As seen on designboom and Inhabitat.
Client: CapitaLand
Location: Hangzhou, China
Building surface: 389,489 m2
Building site: 40,355m2
Programme: Mixed-use, incorporating commercial buildings: Class A office buildings, five-star hotels and high end residential buildings.
Status: Planned realisation 2012
UNStudio – Concept Design and Schematic Design: Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos, Astrid Piber with Hannes Pfau, Markus van Aalderen
Team: Juliane Maier, Marc Salemink, Shu Yan Chan and Andreas Bogenschuetz, Marina Bozukova, Brendon Carlin, Miklos Deri, Gary Freedman, Juergen Heinzel, Alexander Hugo, Abhijit Kapade, Marcin Koltunski, Fernie Lai, James Leng, Peter Moerland, Rudi Nieveen, Hans-Peter Nuenning, Hyunil Oh, Yi Cheng Pan, Steffen Riegas, Rikjan Scholten, Ioana Sulea, Christian Veddeler, Luming Wang, Zhenfei Wang, Rein Werkhoven, Georg Willheim
Advisors – LDI: China United Engineering Corporation, Hangzhou SMEP, Fire, LEED: Arup
Facade: Meinhardt Façade Technology, Hong Kong Transport: MVA, Hong Kong
RT @archdaily: Raffles City / UNStudio http://bit.ly/12Pp7i
awful!!!
i like this shape
这就是传说中 位于杭州钱江新城的来福士城啊，不过这里的图片也太少了。
杭州最具未来感的设计作品。
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it is so beautiful
This is just another form without any underlying reason. Have we not learned anything from this recent economic crisis? Perhaps designing large shopping centers and office/hotel towers aren’t the best use of money and resources.
boring….
Peer pressure :)
Don’t worry too much~
These kind of things are just for fun~
There’re surely some improvement~!
It should be revised, and hopefully get better~
I hope this is not a final design.
Rather phallic-looking, wouldn’t you say??
Why are there some many haters on this web site, why look at unbuilt projects and say the same negative crap everytime. Design is subjective people! Stop Hateing
i like the shape. There is no any reason to learn from the so called economic crisis. we must know better the contribution to architecture in an wider perspective.
v e r y d i s a p p o i n t e d a b o u t U N . . .
Weirdly unique yet bland as well. UNSTudio’s portfolio is strong er than this project, that is for sure. The form of the towers’ common base is particularly muddled and undercuts their attempt at making the towers appear as elegant, not chaotic, fluid cylinders.
very nice architectures , thank you for share
1:12 AM Jul 23rd
http://t.co/VvShHro