Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2024
Shenzhen Book Mall Bay Area Branch
by Zhubo Design
- A' Design Award 2024 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- CLIENT: Bureau Of Public Works Of Shenzhen Municipality Engineering Design Management Center
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 78,549
- Verification code 46F53E9A3C · Verify this award
About Shenzhen Book Mall Bay Area Branch
Shenzhen Book Mall Bay Area Branch is a cultural building located in the centre of a large urban park. The building is half buried beneath a gently rising green space, so the park is preserved and more greenery remains visible. More than 74 percent of the floor area is placed underground, and open routes allow visitors to cross the park and to move freely between indoor and outdoor spaces. Functions include a book city, a folk museum, shops and a multi-functional hall. Green roofs and shading panels reduce energy use.
Positioned within the contemporary discourse surrounding regenerative urbanism and biophilic architectural practice, this visualization of the Bay Area Branch cultural complex by Zhubo Design presents a compelling vision of architecture as landscape and landscape as architecture in seamless integration. The design demonstrates exceptional compositional sophistication through its deployment of flowing organic forms that appear to emerge naturally from the terrain, creating pavilion structures whose undulating profiles evoke geological formations, unfurling vegetation, or the gentle curves of coastal topography. The technical achievement evident in this rendering lies not merely in the complexity of the curvilinear architectural language but in the masterful orchestration of multiple programmatic elements into a unified experiential sequence. Visitors approaching from the urban fabric to the left would encounter a gradual transition from hardscape to softscape, with the architecture serving as a mediating element between metropolitan density and waterfront openness. The chromatic strategy employs a restrained palette that allows the verdant landscape to predominate, positioning the architectural interventions as supportive frames for human activity rather than assertive monuments demanding attention. The presence of the observation wheel at the compositional center suggests a celebration of prospect and panorama, inviting visitors to experience the landscape from multiple elevations and vantage points. One might observe in this design an engagement with East Asian garden traditions of borrowed scenery, where distant views are incorporated into the experiential composition as integral elements. The atmospheric rendering technique, with its veiled skyline and luminous bay, transforms the metropolitan context into a dreamlike backdrop that enhances rather than competes with the foreground cultural programming. How might visitors experience the gradual revelation of spatial sequences as they move through this landscape of intertwined architecture and nature?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Integration of architecture and landscape.
The project realizes the placement of the building while maintaining the park, half-burying the building under the gently lifting green space, creating a park that slopes towards the central axis, which allows more greenery to be seen and shades the cluttered streetscape across the road.
The design contemplates the relationship between architecture, the city and nature, where the building is the city and the city is packed into nature. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Total land area: 65902.45 square metre;
Total construction area: 131147.8 square metre;
Volume rate: 1.15;
Building height: 12M;
Number of floors: 2 underground floors, 2 aboveground floors - Tags
- Open Space, Integration of Architecture and Landscape, Green Building, Open-plan Design
- Production Technology
- Passive green building.
Suspended, elevated, green roofs, above ground landscaping paired with underground construction are designed to reduce energy consumption.
Materials that match the function.
The west elevation adopts curved materials, which is conducive to enhancing the mechanical properties of the materials, narrowing the curtain wall components and creating a lightweight effect.
The east elevation uses translucent aluminum panels that resemble ocean waves to provide shade for the building. - Design Challenge
- Leaving the building open.
The strategy of opening up the building allows people to walk through the park without interrupting their route.
More than 74% of the building area is underground, and the open design connects the ground and the floor, allowing the experience of walking through the bookstore to be freely switched between indoors and outdoors. The all-weather urban corridor makes the building more than just a bookstore: nature, city and architecture are intertwined here. - Project Duration
- The project started in 2018 in Shenzhen and finished in 2025.
- Operation Flow
- Immersive cultural experience in Qushuiliushang
The paths are connected in the form of Qushuiliushang, and the staircases and ramps are like mountains of books and ribbons of jade, forming a multifaceted and interesting public space.
The functions of the building include book city, folk museum, commercial, multi-functional hall and creative culture, etc. The building becomes a part of the city as a collection of various functions. - Research
- Architecture is city, city is architecture
As a new model of New Generation Book City, the building itself is built as a city, trying to lead people to rethink the relationship between culture and life.
Making culture in the place where the city and nature blend
Shenzhen Book Mall Bay Area Branch is located in the center of the Central Park. In this urban public space with superior natural environment. we integrate culture into it. - Inspiration
- Generating architecture from urban relations.
Located between the subway station and many public buildings, the bookstore integrates the public access and the internal functional flow, which is a building penetrated by the city, blurring the boundary between the building and the city.
The circular volume rising from the center of the sloping park and the rectangular volume of the public building across the street form the composition of the "circle of heaven and earth" in Chinese culture. - Image Credits
- Green Snail
Colors of Shenzhen Book Mall Bay Area Branch
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