Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center by FTA Group is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Golden A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.
GoldArchitecture· 2025
Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center
by FTA Group
Client: FTA Group
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #172077The Design
About Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center
Shanghai Cloud is a digital intelligence center located in the North Shanghai Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai. The complex consists of three towers with a total floor area of 270,000 square meters, and the tallest tower reaches 130 meters. Two towers are linked at the top by an aerial corridor spanning 63 meters. The project grows from the former Pengpu Machine Factory, where the original structure and the red brick facade were repaired and the roofs were replaced with metal and glass. Staggered cube volumes create terraces, sky gardens and outdoor courtyards.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Shanghai Cloud Digital Intelligence Center creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.
Where to Get It
Smart City and Industrial Innovation Zone Design
We specialize in transforming industrial areas into intelligent innovation zones. Our integrated approach combines urban planning, architecture, interior and landscape design to create dynamic tech parks and office campuses. With 900+ completed projects spanning 30 million square meters, we deliver comprehensive solutions that blend heritage preservation with cutting-edge design.
Discuss Your ProjectBehind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Located in the North Shanghai Hi-Tech Park, the project takes the new smart city as the core, and promotes the renewal of the region from industrialization to intelligence. Hundred meters high data center and 5A office building grow out from old Pengpu Machine Factory. The dislocation and occlusion of the architectural form creates more terraces, sky gardens and outdoor courtyards for the community, making the scene warm and allowing creativity to happen anytime, anywhere.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The new building consists of three towers with a total floor area of 270,000 square meters, with the tallest one reaching 130 meters. The two towers on the west side are linked by a corridor at the top of 100 meters, spanning 63 meters.
After the completion of the plant renovation, the heavy industry workshop will cover an area of 16,000 square meters. The east side is 72 meters long, the west side is 78 meters long, the overall width is 122 meters, the average net height is 12 meters (18 meters at highest point), the large-scale building facade and the long-span steel concrete structure bring infinite possibilities for the internal space layout. - Tags
- Industrial heritage, Renovation, Smart city, Industry integration, Superimposedeffect
- Production Technology
- In order to reduce the impact of traffic, the high-rise buildings are arranged along the site boundary to create a complete urban interface and a staggered skyline. Two towers are linked at the top by aerial corridor to enhance the connection of internal spaces. Inside, the comfortable and pleasant street size is used to create a dynamic and warm science and technology community. Besides, for the old factory, the team adopts the scheme of the new into old, including reinforcement of original structure, red brick facade repair, replacement of metal and glass roofs, etc.
- Design Challenge
- Land in the key area of Shanghai that can be developed with a capacity of one million square meters is extremely scarce. In the face of the situation that the site is basically occupied by industrial relics, the design team creatively proposed the expansion concept from "square" to "cube". The scheme has been verified and affirmed by many experts such as the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, the Academy of Social Sciences, and the History Museum. As a result, the original structure and red brick facade of the old factory building were carefully restored, while incorporating elements such as modern curtain wall technology and glass roof to breathe new life into the historic building.
- Research
- Many successful cases in the United States show that the degree of wisdom determines its position in the future industrial ecology. In this case, the design team also regards "wisdom" as the soul of the park. From basic functions to intelligent industrial clusters, the logic of intelligent empowerment is consistent. In the meanwhile, the application of big data is cross-industry, so the project deeply integrates the upstream and downstream enterprises of the capital and the industrial chain, and creates a "high-density, high-level and efficient" innovation experience.
- Inspiration
- "Superimposed Cube", as the motif of architecture, runs through the design. The emergence of a digital intelligence center from the old factory is meant to bring this place the future productivity. In the meanwhile, the design cuts the buildings into flexible and harmonious cube blocks by breaking them into pieces, to avoid becoming isolated islands in the city. Each cube has a vertical community inside with a three-dimensional network, creating more casual communication spaces.
- Project Duration
- The project started in April 2021 and finished in June 2024 in Shanghai.
- Operation Flow
- Based on the different sizes and business characteristics of the enterprise, the design provides flexible and diverse office space to meet the diverse needs of startups to large. At the same time, it provides high-standard laboratory facilities for high-tech enterprises to support the research and development of cutting-edge technologies. In addition, apart from serving industrial development, the project also meets the multi-functional needs of reception, conference, exhibition, brand promotion and so on.
- Team Members
- FTA Group, Architectural design
FTA Group, Planning - Image Credits
- Image #1-5: Photographer Ai Qing, CreatAR Images, 2024
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