Jaeger Kahlen Partner is one of the joint winners of the international competition for the Bao’An Bay Industrial Investment Tower in Shenzhen, China. With a distinctive design approach, the landmark building will generate modern office spaces and enhance the surrounding urban fabric.
Located in a neighborhood under development, with easy access to the Shenzhen Bao’An International Airport and the cities along the Pearl River Delta, the office building is a “set of shifting volumes that break the tower into a series of terraced stacked urban blocks”. Adding pedestrian green spaces and a new bus terminal, the project will improve the urban context and offer a new experience in the city.
With height restrictions of 150 meters, imposed by the proximity to the airport, the architects proposed a design that “breaks the monolithic building mass into a series of several smaller volumes that shift in and out to integrate better the tower into the scale of the site surroundings”. Jaeger Kahlen Partner has designed a composition of shifting volumes, a cascade of terraces and cantilevers.
Each block, an urban neighborhood on its own, has its floors connected by a spiral staircase, encouraging an exchange of ideas and improving communication. Forming the social heart of the villages, these spaces break down the traditional impersonal and dull office entity, by flooding the interior with natural light and framing unique vantages of the surrounding city and landscape. Atriums, the social places of the structure, are gathering points that open directly onto the terraces. On another hand, the lifted and recessed ground lobby of the office building enables the creation of a large shaded open public plaza, connected to the adjacent public spaces and parks.
Collaborating with Transsolar KlimaEngineering, the architects integrated practical and efficient sustainability techniques into the design. For example, “the innovative closed cavity façade with solar blinds positioned in the air-gaps features minimized solar thermal transfer while providing acoustic separation between the office interiors and the busy outdoor surroundings”. Moreover, a “radial cooling system has been installed in order to decrease the energy demand for the constantly required air volume, […] highly efficient glass minimized both heat gain and glare, and accessible terraces reduced heat island effect and improved natural ventilation”.
