City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto by Gad

City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto by Gad is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award de Oro in Diseño de Arquitectura, Edificación y Estructuras Competition Category.

OroArquitectura· 2022

City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto

by Gad

Client: Hangzhou Xihu Investment&Greentown Real Estate CO.,Ltd

A' Design Award de Oro Winner in Arquitectura Category

26,892

Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #130944

Visit Site View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto

Ciudad sobre las Nubes es un complejo de oficinas y comercios de uso mixto situado en Hangzhou. Cuatro edificios principales se apilan sobre basamentos comerciales circulares de dos plantas, y su disposición configura un parque verde central. La planta baja cuenta con varios accesos que conectan el complejo con la ciudad circundante. Los muros cortina de vidrio otorgan a las fachadas un aspecto sereno y abierto. Un sistema de ajardinamiento vertical vincula los espacios compartidos de los distintos niveles. La combinación de áreas de trabajo, comercios y espacios sociales favorece una manera equilibrada de trabajar y vivir.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award de Oro

City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto ha ganado el A' Design Award de Oro, un reconocimiento inmensamente prestigioso concedido a diseños de primera categoría, maravillosos y sobresalientes. Los ganadores de Oro son creaciones sumamente innovadoras, visionarias y glamorosamente deslumbrantes que reflejan el prodigio, la sabiduría y la destreza de sus diseñadores. Se espera que City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto sea una invención muy elogiada, pionera y monumental que aporta un valor sin precedentes. Este diseño ganador del A' Design Award de Oro es un proyecto espectacular y respetado que beneficia enormemente y hace avanzar las fronteras del arte, la ciencia, el diseño y la tecnología. City Above the Clouds Complejo de oficinas de uso mixto crea intensos sentimientos de deseo, despierta la pasión, fomenta la creatividad y nos fascina.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: The project is located in Hangzhou. It adopts the conceptual planning system with the theme of City Above The Clouds. Four main buildings are stacked on double-storey circular commercial podium buildings respectively to form a central green park. The commercial space on the first floor has multiple entrances connected to the city, creating a vibrant, three-dimensional and open ideal city.
The architects integrated the natural environment, hence creating the ideal town for the future.
Dimensions & Packaging: The scale of buildings is human-based. People’ s movements and feelings in the architectural space are taken into consideration. The design includes different scales of space from large, medium to small. There are public, open and shared spaces, such as the courtyard formed by 60-meter-high buildings, some 6x6m platforms for communication and exchange; there are also customized apartments to provide individual and private spaces for different groups of people.
Tags: Future, Life, Scene, Share, Social
Production Technology: This design is highly practical, to which an indispensable part is the technical support and selection of materials. The glass used for the building facade is a result of careful comparison and screening for over a year with the developer’ s kind support. With curtain wall, large area of glass looks sophisticated, bringing an overall humble feeling to the buildings, further integrating them into the city.
Design Challenge: One of the biggest challenges of the project, on one hand, is that many life scenes and functions, especially social sharing spaces, can not be all placed in the horizontal plane due to site limitations. To solve this problem, the architects used a vertical greening system to connect multiple scenes and functions. On the other hand, it is also challenging to bring natural sunlight to the 60-meter-high atrium. The architects worked closely with the structure engineers and curtain wall designers to deliberate on the structure and curtain wall components. Finally the size and density of components are able to be reasonably controlled on the basis that the structure is feasible, so that higher level of comfort and permeability in the atrium is achieved. The public corridors at bottom of buildings, ranging from 9 to 15 meters wide, are not disturbed by columns to allow for unobstructed view as a result of frequent consultations with structure engineers.
Research: Through information collection, field research and on-site interviews in the early stage of design, we found the project is close to Zhangzhou-Changzhou Expressway so that it plays an important role in displaying the city image. The surroundings of the site are mainly industrial parks from 1990s and there’ s no large- scale and intensive green space. Building functions are also unitary and fragmented. Unfortunately, with the advancements of Internet, young people prefer online connections to real communications in actual life scenes and spend remarkably less time in the nature. Overall, it’ s a pretty closed environment in lack of urban vitality.
Inspiration: Inspired by key words such as ideal city and future community, the architects created a futurist architectural form that focuses on openness, cooperation and sharing. The thoughts of architects is balance life and work. Attract the youth from online to offline to communicate with others and embrace nature, and provide a community living space. From the combination of office and commercial businesses to the sharing of production resources, creating a new way of working and living is what we need.
Project Duration: The project started in 8 October 2017 in HangZhou, ZheJiang, and finished in 20 December 2020
Operation Flow: The architects initially aimed to create a futuristic form of architecture and at the same time to meet people’ s daily work and life needs, and therefore adopted a new approach of combination of buildings. Basically the buildings conform to the site property line and surround the courtyard inside. The main opening is at the southwest corner to face the city, and some smaller openings at other corners are where the complex breathes. Furthermore, compound function of offices and commercials creates various spaces, while life scenes of young people are implanted in consideration of sharing production resources, which results in a community type of living place, just like a magnetic field, that draws people together to communicate and exchange, and guides people toward a brand new way of work and life.
Patents: Copyrights belong to gad, 2021.
Team Members: Project Director: Zhang Wei
Lead Designer:He Zhen
Architects:Wu Xiaodong, Zheng Weijian
Image Credits: Main Image:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Southwest corner perspective view)
Image # 1:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Perspective view along XiYuan Seven Road)
Image # 2:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Aerial view)
Image # 3:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Courtyard perspective view)
Image # 4: Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Courtyard elevation view)