Bronze Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2022

Seal Building

by Peng Xiao

A' Design Award 2022 Bronze Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
Awarded April 15, 2022
CLIENT: Central-South Architectural Design Institute Co.,Ltd.
Estimated Number of Design Views: 10,390
Verification code D17D2A39BD · Verify this award

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About Seal Building

Seal is an archive building located in Wuhan, Hubei, China. The building has a gross floor area of 57,487 square meters and a height of 66 meters. The form combines a tower and a podium, which frees shared space on the lower floors and places the archive storage on the upper floors. Public and professional circulation routes are separated. The facade is inspired by the Chinese seal and presents timelines of historic events in the city. Local materials and low carbon technologies are applied. A multipurpose hall and a large meeting room are open to the public.

Press Kit

Unique Properties: Wuhan is an old city with long history, the architect take advantage of reginal cultural inheritance and innovation by design inspiration, facade components and building details. They put people first by placing emphasis on the user experience. This is not a boring place of storing and accessing the archives, but rather a place of open, comfortable, sharing space for communication. Sustainable and Low carbon. Multiple Proactive and inactive technologies have been applied in the building ensuring the sustainable and low carbon characters of the building.
Dimensions & Packaging: Total Land Area: 13291 square meters
Gross Floor Area: 57487 square meters
Height：66 meters
Tags: culture sharing space ecologic
Production Technology: City and Building: the design focuses on the relationship between building and city.
Function and Flow: Clear space division based on the function difference. Flow of public user and professional user separated clearly. Space and Environment: Mixture of Building and environment, infiltration of inside and outside space during design. Materials and Details: Materials based on the local material accessibility. Modern technique to display long and memorable history. Low-Carbon and Sustainability: Technologies been applied to achieve low carbon.
Design Challenge: Due to the shortage of land, two forms in the design: I-shaped plate layout and high-rise tower layout. Through analyzing relationship of the city, the form of tower and podium is optimal. Hence, continuing the urban space, and using convenience of vertical transportation to leave more shared space on the lower floors. The relatively private archives warehouse is on the high-rise floor, ensuring the safety and easy management of the archives warehouse, also facilitating the accessibility.
Project Duration: The project design and construction started in April 2014 and finished in August 2017 and located in Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Operation Flow: The project combines the requirement of the client and public users by applying smart retrieve and search, smart accessing system, smart archives storage and accessing system. Multiple purpose hall and big meeting room in the Archives opens to the public for commercial purposes, releasing government financial burden. Both current urban layout and center square layout makes the building in line with the relationship with the city.
Research: Design by the need of government and use digital design method to improve the project.
Inspiration: Seal, special Chinese methods of keeping record, which are being embedded in the building appearance, indicating the building witnessing the leaps and bound of the city development, and the transformation from old-fashion into modern.
Once the four elevations are being displayed together on the same page, a big W will be formed which is the first letter of City Wuhan, where this building situates.
Specific timelines of big historic event is being presented on the building facade, recording the history development of the city and ushering a new page of the future.