The architectural vision for the Mandarin Oriental high-rise by Urban Office Architecture explored the idea of a complete merging of architecture, city, the river and the surrounding urban landscape. The base concept of a morphing floor plan allows the building structure to enjoy a “dancing” form. The floor plates change at all levels, therefore accommodating variety of programmatic requirements as well as making a unique environment for each occupant.

The building responds to the surrounding both at larger – metropolitan and local scale. The three sided lower floor plates address both mixed-use program and the converging urban forces. A base plinth allows users to interact with the building while bridging between the structure height and the human scale, acting as urban catalyst. It allows citizens and tenants to meet, mingle and enjoy dining, shopping and various cultural events.

The complexities of the programmatic needs are met by highly functional, but ever morphing floor plates. The building features a two-sided and three-sided organization plan around the central core, both for the office and hotel levels. This enables tenant to organize their spaces with great flexibility while taking advantage of the most natural daylight. As the building rises vertically into a rectangular floor plate, the opportunity of full floor suites is emphasized together with maximum access to daylight on all sides.

The tower is designed so that maximum use of the floor plates is achieved. Going from three sided to a two sided to a single layout four public spaces organize distribution of program vertically, allowing for interaction and sharing of these areas by variety of users. Read the rest of this entry »

MAD’s Beijing Chaoyang Park Plaza breaks ground. It is a realization of the concept “Shanshui City” and the project pushes the boundary of the urbanization process by creating a dialogue between artificial scenery and natural landscapes. The Plaza development is located in the central business district of Beijing and due to its proximity to the park it will highly impact the skyline of this metropolis.

A pair of asymmetrical towers creates a dramatic skyline in front of the park. Ridges and valleys define the shape of the exterior glass facade, as if the natural forces of erosion wore down the tower into a few thin lines. Flowing down the facade, the lines emphasize the smoothness of the towers and its verticality. The internal ventilation and filtration system of the ridges draw a natural breeze indoors, which not only improves the interior space but also creates an energy efficient system.

Landscape elements are injected into the interiors of the towers to augment the feeling of nature within an urban framework. The two towers are connected by a tall courtyard lobby with a ceiling height of up to 17 meters. The site and sounds of flowing water make the entire lobby feel like a natural scene from a mountain valley. At the top of the towers, multi-level terraces shaped by the curving forms of the towers are public gardens where people can gaze out over the entire city and look down at the valley scene created by the lower buildings on the site.

Located to the South of the towers, four office buildings are shaped like river stones that have been eroded over a long period. Smooth, round, and each with its own features, they are delicately arranged to allow each other space while also forming an organic whole. Adjacent to the office buildings are two multi-level residential buildings in the Southwest area of the compound. These buildings continue the ‘mid-air courtyard concept, and provide all who live here with the freedom of wandering through a mountain forest.

The project was awarded the “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)”Gold certificate. By exploring the symbiotic relationship between modern urban architecture and natural environment, Chaoyang Park Plaza revives the harmonious co-existence between urban life and nature. Read the rest of this entry »

“The City Rises” is Urban Office Architecture proposal for Parramatta’s architectural competition. They proposed a set of “Siamese pair” of towers, which would represent diversity rising out of unity. The unique form performs better and more efficiently from the heat loss-gain point of view as less dispersion is generated. It also reacts better to structural and lateral forces. However its ultimate advantage is that of offering unique interior opportunities for the office requirements. In particular, as the building rises offices take advantage of the relationship with the vertical public spaces, allowing for an innovative and pleasant working environment.

From urban point of view, the building is envisioned as an extension of the public spaces. Its outermost layer is composed by a vertical circulation which allows pedestrian to climb to the building top via an enclosed glass circulation system – glass boxes. While rising, the visitor will stop at suspended publicly programmed “floating rooms” – black boxes. At a distance the building is seen as both one and two separate buildings, but most importantly as an asset to the public realm rather than a form isolated from the field.

Located on the northern exposure, the black and glass boxes become both an effective filter for the entire building, collecting, harvesting and re-circulating water, light, and energy. The sinuous building shape is ideal against winds and sun glare. The building skin is made of several layers of glass with an inner photosensitive film who is able to adjust to the amount of solar impact and become more or less transparent. Read the rest of this entry »

The site of Huangdu Art Center by MAD Architects illuminates controversial issue in urban sprawl. Positioned in close proximity to the heart of old Beijing, and close to historically significant architecture such as the Forbidden City and opposite the National Art Museum of China, the site straddles this divide -small scale hutongs – remain at the sites western edge, yet the east is bounded by a modern axis of major city routes, commercial malls and hotels.

In MAD Architects they quote Lao She who states that the beauty of old Beijing exists in the empty space between architecture, where trees grow and birds live.  As such, the buildings themselves do not have to show any special shape in order to be unique.

Old Beijing is built of a tight network of closely woven districts of communal courtyard housing blocks. The basic typology of these districts is one-storey buildings which form distinct geometric patterns repeated at high density. This historic urban fabric is increasingly under threat and it is now forced to retreat for the larger, monumental modern architecture of contemporary Beijing.

MAD proposes to create a building established on many small hutong-scalar pieces that collectively achieve the overall volume. Huangdu is designed by layering different courtyard vertically, resulting in multifaceted, semi-solid volumes, which maintains the spatial relationships and hollow cores of the courtyards. Huangdu is an urban instrument signifying Beijing’s aspirations to be a forward looking city yet always respects its roots and its past. MAD’s proposal extends the city fabric from small to large, negotiating the two scales at work here on site, and provide a means to reconcile two worlds of Beijing today. Read the rest of this entry »