Client: China State Construction International Investment (Hunan) limited
Location: Changsha, Hunan, China
Site area: 10.6ha
Design: April-June 2018
Design Stage: conceptual scheme of master planning equivalent to RIBA Working Stage 1-2
Design team: HMD(Shanghai) and Pro-Form Architects ltd (Jing Wu, Danyal Raza, Aysha Utoshi), in collaboration with Hunan Provincial Institute of Architectural Design and Research limited.
Concept:
Four basic patterns in traditional Chinese city/town were extracted to uphold the conceptual foundation of the spatial planning for these four separated sites in this large scale urban development, and they are: Gateway, Garden/Park, Neighborhood Block or Lane and Market.
In the Gateway sites (E13), two large cooperates type of office blocks, also linked on the top floor, form a ‘gateway’ sitting in between two urban parks. One the east, the tilted planted roof picks up height from the earth mounting landscape and merges with the counter part west roof over the pond in between two buildings. A public foot bridge jumps over the pond and enables people walking between two parks without being able to access the real office domain. Towards redial-shaped city roads, which means maximum urban exposure, two large solid gable walls will play roles as large scale advertisement/signages.
The Park site (E39) is designated for medium/large scale of research-led technology company’s scientific park, seven similar office blocks delivering a level of flexibility, with dramatic contrast between inwards and outwards facing façade, linked by elevated weather-protected foot bridges. To the west corner of the park, also the most public-exposing part of the site, there would be a featured building of the project that accommodates the sheared facilities of the park and beyond.
The buildings in the Neighborhood/Lane site (E37), mainly catered for smaller starting-up companies in innovative industry, provides a crucified form of pedestrian link, between the park to the east and the village to the west, and between the residential quarter to the north and a smaller park to the south. The quarterly divided street blocks resemble a typical form of neighborhood having ground level shopping-dinning frontages and a relatively quieter backyard shared by the residents only (or possibly accessible to the public on conditions). To create some dramatic contrasts, the perimeter buildings will have a more regular sober appearance, while the inner part of the block will see some bubbling building mass. The South-east quarter of the site is dedicated to a business hotel, which also features a specially shaped public/leisure/dining hub on the street corner.
In the Market site (E25), the substantial part of the development- the buildings- are pushed towards the site boundary/building set-back boundaries, while the ‘avoid’ part of the development is left for the outdoor activities, which are very likely to integrate the commercial activities and residents’ daily social interactivities. These outdoor events are regarded as the key to activate the whole site. The main outdoor area is divided into several activity zones, where the major one is lowered down to the basement level at the pivot point of building blocks, to create the Heart of the outdoor space. The north part of the site is too narrow to accommodate courtyard space and thus retained for a single building that allows larger floor plates to cater for education, cinemas and indoor sports and roof top tennis courts.
The majority linear buildings are for retail, food and drinks, where the roofs of the first-floor spaces are all linked up by landscaped walkways. Several featured flag-ship restaurant featured buildings are allocated to the deeper part of the site, also to relieve the visual pressure to the residential area east to the site.