Shenzhen: The Latest Architecture and News

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Highways have been operating in largely the same way since the early twentieth century. In the Bao'an District in Shenzhen, China, rapid urbanization and industrialization within the built environment is not mirrored in its infrastructural spine, the G107 highway. In order to investigate the possibilities for this strip and its adjacent areas, a visionary open competition was organized earlier this year. A team lead by Avoid Obvious Architects (AOA) and TETRA Architects and Planners presented a redefinition of the highway typology, with a system complex enough to properly service the rich productivity it is connecting.

AOA and TETRA's new G107 is a multi-modal transport system, focused on allowing futuristic modes of transport as it is on implementing cutting edge levels of sustainability. Also referred to by the consortium as an "organic highway," the proposition aims to foster and connect a network of "green manufacturing," with the strategic vision of making Bao'an a carbon neutral city by 2045. 

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The Urban Design Plus is a PostGrad program. Applicants must already posses either an undergraduate or graduate degree. We are open to people with a diverse backgrounds that relate to the formation of our urban places – including architects, urban planners, landscape architects, economists, artists, sociologists, etc.

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A new cultural center designed by Mecanoo, located in the Longgang district of Shenzhen, China is currently under construction and is set to top out by end-April. With the goal of revitalizing an existing park-square, the new complex includes a variety of programs such as a bookshop, an art museum, a youth center, and a science center. The nearly 100,000 square-meter building is set to open to the public in 2018.

Bao’an District, located in west of Shenzhen, adjacent to Pearl River Estuary in the west and bordered with Dongguan in the north, as well as in the golden corridor connecting Guangdong and Hong Kong and the heartland for development backbone of Great Pearl River Delta, is featured by advantageous geographical location. Taking National Highway G107, Bao’an Avenue and Metro Line 1 as the skeleton, the Golden Development Zone is one of the three major zones in the overall spatial structure of “three zones, two hearts, two cities and one valley” delimited by Bao’an Comprehensive Plan, with a total length of about 30km.

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The Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale (UABB) in Shenzhen finished in February, but at least one element of it lives on. Floating Fields, a project by Thomas Chung, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was installed at the UABB site at the Dacheng Flour Mills in Shekhou as a demonstration of a concept to return agriculture to the Shenzhen's bay with floating agricultural fields. The project, which forms the major landscape piece at the Biennale, received the Biennale Organising Committee Award at the event's closing ceremony.

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Beijing Institute of Architectural Design's (BIAD) 2A2 Design Department has unveiled their proposal for the Culture and Arts Center serving the newly developed Shekou Sea World area in Shenzhen. The design takes a rare attempt to optimize the interaction between commercial and cultural spaces, by taking advantage of the surrounding seascape.

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British firm PLP has unveiled their design for a large complex at the heart of the Pearl River Delta in China. The master plan comprises four buildings: the Platform for Contemporary Arts, the Lizhi Park Tower, the Concourse, and the Nexus - a 600-meter tall office and hotel tower that will be the masterplan's centerpiece and the region's tallest skyscraper.

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Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects have won an international competition to design the world's largest waste-to-energy plant on the outskirts of Shenzhen, China. The new "Shenzhen East Waste-to-Energy Plan will be capable of incinerating 5000 tonnes of waste per day - "one third of the waste generated by Shenzhen's 20 million inhabitants every year," according to the team. In addition to incinerating waste and generating power, the plant will serve as a place to teach residents about its purpose.

At the dawn of the age of transatlantic commercial aviation, Shannon, a small town on the west coast of Ireland, was thrust into the spotlight. By 1959 it had been developed as the world’s first Free Trade Zone and New Town, providing a new—and persistent—business model for US multinationals seeking cheaper ways to operate in Europe. On the other side of the world, China was beginning to develop its urbanisation policy and was interested in how Shannon had successfully decentralised its administration from Dublin. After many visits in the early 1980s by Chinese leaders to study this model, under the direction of Deng Xiaoping, the Shannon planning system was used as a template in the formation of Shenzhen and has since been rolled across China.

New Horizon_architecture from Ireland is the flagship exhibition programme for Irish architecture and the built environment as part of Irish Design 2015. Shan-Zhen was first presented at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in 2015.

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HENN has won first place in the competition to design Kingdee Tower, the headquarters for software company Kingdee in Shenzhen, China. The 44-story glazed tower will be the central building for the new headquarters, rising from an irregular pentagon plan situated between two existing nine-story blocks.

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In May 2015, Shenzhen Art Museum and Shenzhen Library organized an international design competition for their new homes in Longhua District. 134 firms submitted concept proposals for the first stage, eight firms were selected to enter the second phase competition in July, among them OMA, Steven Holl, Mecanoo, OPEN, KSP, and others. Below is OPEN’s competition entry for the second phase.

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At the opening to the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB) we took a moment to speak with Hubert Klumpner, one of the event's six curators. A professor from the ETH Zurich Swiss Institute of Technology and partner at Urban Think Tank, Klumpner, together with Alfredo Brillembourg, spearheaded the curation of "Radical Urbanism," a sub-theme of the entire Biennale's wider theme, "Re-Living the City."

"...we believe that we have enough buildings, enough construction, enough infrastructure. And it is now time to consolidate it and find the qualities within the built. This is not against future production, it is more about a consideration of what we really want in cities." - Hubert Klumpner

Read on to learn how the "Radical Urbanism" exhibition reveals what we can learn from the interventions and ad-hoc, bottom-up initiatives. Also, don't miss Klumpner and Brillembourg's essay, "The Evolution of Radical Urbanism: What Does the Future Hold for Our Cities."

Steven Holl Architects has unveiled their design for a new public library and museum in a developing area of Shenzhen, China. With the goal of creating a public space with two buildings connected below the plaza level, the massing concept is based on a three-part removal. While the design did win the most votes from the jury in the overall competition, city officials chose a different scheme to continue with.

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