MVRDV has won the competition to design two structures within the Tianfu Software Park in Chengdu, China. One of the structures is a 150-meter-tall tower that acts as a centerpiece to the entire campus. The other is a four-story cultural center featuring an art museum, conference hall, library, and exhibition space. Boasting a faceted sloping design, the scheme invites visitors to explore its interior.
The project was developed by Chengdu High-Tech Investment Group, and will be home to companies focused on developing 5G, AI, big data, and other high-tech fields. Situated in the southeast of Chengdu, where urban expansion meets a hilly rural area, the design is influenced by this intersection of city and nature. Furthermore, the scheme aligns with Chengdu’s government’s “park city” initiative. This involves the incorporation of green elements that reach from neighboring green spaces into the structures. In fact, the tower boasts a lush cascading garden, whereas the cultural hub features a vital green roof.
The office tower's design maximizes floor plate efficiency and optimizes the views of the eastern mountains. Enclosed by a mesh façade, the atrium creates a semi-outdoor space that is open at the base where it gradually mixes with the shopping podium. As a result, the atrium can support the building's climate plan and ventilation system. In fact, the atrium serves as a buffer zone, minimizing solar gain inside the office spaces while permitting passive cross-ventilation through the mesh and openable panels in the opposing façades. To that, it reduces the amount of energy the building uses by shading the terraces and assists in lowering the need for cooling in the office areas.
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MVRDV and LOLA Unveil "Grüne Mitte," A Participatory Social Housing Complex in Düsseldorf, GermanyThe cultural center is shaped by a triangle site, guiding the structure of the building. The various programs are stacked to form terraces facing the park. The terraced interior is covered with a green roof of faceted triangular panels, forming a semi-outdoor atrium space that encircles and overlooks the inner spaces. The panels are raised at different places along the roof's perimeter to create glass clerestory windows that let light into the inside. The roof itself is a small park, equipped with public plazas, a continuous pathway, and lush green planters that extend the landscape on top of the sloping building.
In our designs for both office tower and cultural centre, the atrium is key. Though they take different forms – one more vertical and the other terraced and traversable – both atria serve the same Functions. They bring in greenery, they connect the buildings from bottom to top, they provide shading and ventilation that make the buildings sustainable, and most importantly, they make these buildings exciting, social places to be. --MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.
Last week, MVRDV and LOLA Architects revealed “Grüne Mitte,” a new development that introduces 500 new apartments and community spaces in Düsseldorf, Germany. Additionally, MVRDV has just announced the WärtZ master plan that repurposes a former business park near the railway station into a dynamic innovation hub. Finally, the studio collaborated with Orange Architects to create the NUVO Project, a new mixed-use complex to be built in Ukraine’s capital.
