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Architects
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Location
Tianjin, China -
Design Principal
James von Klemperer, FAIA -
Director/Senior Designer
Jeffrey A. Kenoff, AIA -
KPF Project Team and Contributors
Jeffrey A. Kenoff, Audrey Choi, Edwin Lau, Peter Gross, Ciara Seymour, Gary Stluka, Benjamin Albury; Bernard Chang; Hanna Chang; Saera Park; Shang Chen; Sarah Smith; James Kehl; Sandra Choy; Thomas Coldefy; Javier Galindo; Onur Gun; Heejin Kim; Yoojung Kim; Ming Leung; Luis Llull; Manon Pare; Charles Portelli; Samuel Schmitz; James Siow; Kristin Speth; Donald Springer; Kyle Steinfeld; Scott Wilson, James von Klemperer, Paul Katz -
Area
152800.0 sqm -
Project Year
2014
When it opens this fall, the megastructure of the Riverside 66 retail project in Tianjin will complete a new phase of He Ping Lu becoming the centerpiece of the Hai He commercial district, and will be prominently visible from the Hai He River. The super shell will be one of the longest single structures in the region, stretching over 350 meters, and, according to Audrey Choi, a Senior Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), "will be built with 22 seven-story high concrete Ribs and over 10,000 panels of glass." On schedule to open in September 2014, the structure of Riverside 66 is now completed and the building enclosure will be finished this April.
In the words of KPF Design Principal James von Klemperer, “Now that the structural frame is complete, to wander inside a series of curved concrete ribs is something like it must be to see a whale skeleton from the inside. Herman Melville would have been inspired.” The concrete and glass structure curves dramatically upward from the riverside and converges with the opposing south façade, yielding a six-story building to meet the context of the Heping District. The building materials “promote transparency and legibility, allowing the interior program to engage the surrounding streets” explains Audrey Choi.
Located at a pivotal point where commerce and waterfront meet, the building is justified toward He Ping Lu, one of the main shopping streets in china, freeing the Hai He River portion of the site for a public park. “The building engages the site’s disconnected edges and unites them within a single shell” explains Jeffrey A. Kenoff, Director and Senior Designer at KPF. Two primary hubs of pedestrian flow at the east and west are connected through a series of public atria. The central atrium in particular “divides the internal shell and directly links the Hai He River with He Ping Lu,” explains Kenoff. “It also operates as both a public plaza and a vertical concourse to the building’s upper sky street.”
The design allows a variety of uses to be arrayed along two major interior boulevards. This circulation is intentionally porous with frequent active entries along the streets that allow the building to operate as a modern version of a traditional bustling merchant setting. Rather than acting as a terminus, the building becomes an integrated constituent of the urban traffic. With one of the grandest public spaces in Tianjin, Kenoff adds, “the project aims to activate the regenerated riverfront as it rethinks the role of China’s urban market.”
The project has already achieved LEED pre-certification and has been honored with several awards, including the "MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards 2007 – Retail & Leisure Commended Certificate" issued by MIPIM and The Architectural Review and the "2010 AIA New York Chapter's Design Awards" in the unbuilt work category, issued by the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter.
