In November 2013 we won an international design competition for the headquarters building of the Zhejiang Publishing Union Group in the "Horn of Hangzhou", and in 2016 we officially broke ground on the project. Today, the building's main construction is almost complete, and we look forward to its completion in the near future.
From the beginning of the design process to the present, the birth of the "corner of Hangzhou" has taken seven years. The process of creating a project from scratch is a comprehensive test of an architect's intelligence, energy and physical ability. Next, we will introduce you to the "boring and arduous" design process, and take a look at the interesting stories behind the design, I try to keep it interesting.
The design began as a creative response to the urban environment.
The West Lake skyline + entrance to the urban core
The project is located in the beautiful city of Hangzhou, and is in the northeasternmost corner of the city's core area delineated in the West Lake Landscape Analysis Area, only 1.8 kilometers away from the West Lake. Its location alone poses two challenges to the design of the building: how to respond to the requirements of the West Lake landscape for the city's skyline, and how to present a distinctive iconic entrance to the city to those who enter Hangzhou's core area?
Corporate culture of publishing and printing
The owner of this case, Zhejiang Printing Group Co., Ltd. is subordinate to Zhejiang Publishing Union Group, the largest publication printing enterprise in Zhejiang Province, the company's predecessor was Zhejiang Xinhua Printing Factory, which was established in 1949. In the era when the network was not yet developed, reading was an important way for people to obtain knowledge and information, and paper printing was the main medium for information dissemination. Times have changed, and in the age of Internet information, we still need to meditate and read books to get rid of impatience and precipitate ourselves. Years of practice and technical precipitation, so that the Printing Group has become the printing industry "national team", is China's publishing and printing business of a backbone force. How to make our design can respond to the characteristics and culture of this enterprise has become a key point in the subsequent design.
Complex site environments spanning three decades
The site is irregularly rectangular, and the current factory buildings are old buildings of the 50s and 60s, whose functions and quality cannot meet the development needs of the Printing Group. The northeast side of the base is the city main road and viaduct and its ring road, the west side is the city symbol Hangzhou Swimming Pool in the 00's, and the south side is the residential area built in different ages from 60's to 80's. In such a complex plot adjacent to buildings of different ages, how to deal with the traffic, the environment, and the buildings spanning across the three ages, as well as how to avoid the impact of this case to the residents of the sunshine and line of sight, is a big problem in front of us. This is a big problem in front of us.
After field research on the site and comprehensive analysis of the surrounding environment, we summarized the problems faced by the design at the beginning of the design: 1, how to define the boundaries of a city center area? 2, how to design a large volume of high-rise in the tight underground to meet the printing group's modernization and development needs, but also to minimize the impact on the surrounding residential 3, how to fully integrate and reflect the corporate culture of Zhejiang Publishing Group to meet the functional needs of the upgrading and transformation of the enterprise? How to fully integrate and reflect the corporate culture of Zhejiang Publishing Union Group and meet the functional needs of upgrading and transformation of the enterprise?
It's amazing how many problems Brainstorm has to solve.
- How to have a superb recognition as the starting point of a cultural and creative street, which is integrated into the already largely formed circle of cultural and leisure centers around the project?
- Located at the intersection of the city's major transportation routes, how can the northeast side of the building present a unique and iconic image display surface?
- Occupying the corner position of the West Lake cultural landscape heritage buffer zone, i.e., the core area of the city, how to bring the landscape view into the building?
- How can we ensure as much as possible that the daylight of the homes of the people around the base will not be affected?
- As the headquarters building of the Publishing Consortium, how to design the building volume to respond to the deep history and culture of its enterprise and the elements of publishing and printing?
With these questions in mind, the rough outline of a complete and heavy architectural form seems to be slowly clarifying...
The "big fat guy" you see in the crowd.
The long process of conceptualization for the building form began. The models (a small part of them) that we pushed through all those years...
The exploration of various design possibilities is constantly underway, based on the solution of all the problems faced.
After trying, overthrowing, starting over, and so on for countless times, the building form finally took shape, and a heavy architectural image finally stood up: forming a triangular main building volume, and forming a podium at the front side, which not only can form a scale transition between the preserved factory building and the high-rise building, but also can give space for the sunshine for the neighboring residences. More importantly, a volume of 100 meters long and 100 meters high forms the only "big fat man" in the core city of Hangzhou, which holds the entrance of the city and the main roads on the east and north sides, which is enough weight! It also has the longest diagonal view towards the West Lake, with an unobstructed view of the lake.
Is the smooth progress of the program secretly happy architects, but was told to be happy too early there is a project feasibility study and West Lake landscape analysis report (combined with a little bit to the effect that): the base of this case is proposed to be built in two 100 meters high, the two absolute height of the building 70 meters above the part of the distance should be greater than 27.5 meters, and as far as possible to increase. Does this mean that the "Big Fat Man", which we hope will guard the city boundary line with a complete and thick image, will be split into two? Do we have to start all over again? Architects are resisting all over.
Can the world of adults only be compromised? We are not convinced.
So, the architect waved his brush, the building 70m above the part of the cut design, so that it looks from afar, it is separated from the two building volumes, and after the cut of the two volume spacing to do 47m, to meet the requirements of the two volume spacing greater than 27.5m, and the building in the cityscape skyline in the volume of the more slender and lightweight. In this way, we not only use the complete architectural form to guard our city boundary, but also guard the order of our inner world, and on the basis of meeting the requirements of the West Lake Landscape Analysis Report, we have a better presentation of the urban landscape of the West Lake Scenic Area.
Let the atrium be the engine of the core
Such a large volume, obviously his standard floor is too large. So how can we dissolve it internally to meet the needs of functional use and the creation of human scale space? Our answer is to put in three atrium spaces. The entrance lobby on the first floor is eight-story high, permeable to the north and south, and the entrance plaza and courtyard facing the south introduce outdoor landscape. The shared lobby in the center of the building has a zigzag-shaped public space that enhances natural ventilation and connects the upper and lower floors through a rotating corridor. The sky lobby in the upper part of the building is naturally lit from the top, allowing fresh air and green landscape plants to remain in the upper floors. A semi-enclosed outdoor sky garden at a height of 70 meters provides a closer-to-ground experience for the high-rise office.
Neighborhood-style creative and cultural rooms are arranged at the bottom of the podium, and in the main building, the production and business rooms, business conference center, and self-use office rooms are arranged from the bottom up, and the overall functions are vertically distributed. With another stroke of the architect's pen, the bottom of the main building is cut off to form an inward-facing center square and a north-south transparent visual experience with the entrance lobby.
Turning up the pages of a book + a sparkling lake
After solving the problem of building volume, how to integrate the corporate culture of Publishing and Printing Group into the design became another core breakthrough point in the design. We can no longer confirm who in the team came up with the idea of turning the pages of a book, which not only interprets the meaning of "Publishing and Printing" through the pages of a book, but also meets the idea of using the lightness of the façade to neutralize the heaviness of the form.
The form of this imagery echoes the shimmering surface of the West Lake that can be seen from where the building is located, and the subtle changes in the static state produce a dynamic beauty.
After countless experiments of turning over books, it was found that irregular gaps would be formed by the natural fall of the books after turning over. The architects try to make irregular opening on the horizontally arranged aluminum louvers, just like the open state of a book, and lift the louvers at the appropriate position by virtue of solid aesthetics and combined with the functional requirements, forming the streamline geometric form of "a gathering and a dispersing, with a sense of tension and relaxation", and meeting the landscape view of the building in all directions.
Finely crafted curtain wall
Seemingly irregular changes in the façade, in fact, poured a lot of architects' efforts. Countless adjustments of details, various ideas to try, give and take, and strive for perfection is the design attitude of every lycser.
The visually varied louvres actually consist of six standard sunshade aluminum panels. This process is optimized by means of a sophisticated computer calculation-aided parametric design. 6 standard-sized curtain wall units, each of which can be mass-produced, make up this complex façade assembly.
The architect made vertical greening design in the sky garden, which enriches the spatial structure level of urban greening garden and the artistic effect of urban three-dimensional landscape, and increases the urban greening and improves the ecological environment of the city. 70m or more building spacing because of the design of the sky garden appears more obvious, and also weakened the horizontal relationship of the architectural form, and enriches the level of the view of the West Lake landscape.
The lighting design of the curtain wall is centered around the design theme of "moving like sparkling water, silent shadow sinking jewel", which strengthens the design aesthetics of the horizontal lines of the building itself, and expresses different moods with different scenes, as if flipping through different books, bringing people a different state of mind.
Final Design Presentation
The implementation process of architectural design and construction of "The Corner of Hangzhou" is a wonderful experience of the "seven-year itch", as well as the process of continuous integration between the owner, the construction unit and the design team, we would like to thank the owner for their trust, and also thank our late cooperation with the design institute. Thanks to the trust of the owner, and thanks to the support of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Architectural Design, we are looking forward to the final completion of the "corner of Hangzhou".
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