Technology - Industry Park
Can the implementation of Scandinavian living conditions and priorities for light and natuure, health and prosperity, social awareness lead to greater development potential in China?
This Technology and Industry Park outside of Bejing encompasses a large amount of industrial functions, corporate development, and housing. To create a unique identity for the new development, it was important to find a balance between the different functional elements of the project. This scheme solves the problem with a unifying green network that physically links the people to their job, to their work, and to the nature.
The different functions are clearly defined, through their materials and forms, but throughout the project, there is a specifically nordic expression that emphasizes the cleanliness and practicality that Scandinavian architecture and design has come to embody.
Industrial Zone: Each factory is oriented so that there is an axis connecting the administrative offices on the green network and the secondary entrance from the industrial side. This further helps isolate the industrial functions of the factory floor from the needs of the workers and drivers moving between the front and back of the building.
The loading zone for each independent factory is given enough clearance for 24-meter trucks to load and unload cargo. The loading docks are covered and at an angle, allowing for increased maneuverability and improved efficiency, and the zone in front of each factory also allows some flexible area for equipment or material storage. Each building also includes secondary entrances for drivers and other visitors who would be accessing the interior of the industrial site.
All of the modes of transportation are seperated to maintain efficiency for the industry, with access to truck parking from the industrial route. There is also close proximity to parking areas around the offices for employees with cars. The most prominent element is the green pedestrian connection to the housing for employees living close by, which should help to unify the entire development.
Life between buildings: To help serve the employees during their breaks and to activate the green network, the narrow areas between the industry clusters have been specified to include small shops and food stands. This will help inject the area with an urban element, and make the park area an attractive place for all visitors as well.
The tree cover, winding between the factories and administration buildings, will help obscure the size of the wide buildings. Its presence achieves a emphatic green edge around all the park area, making an accessible, interactive scale and softness that industry buildings typically lack.
The green of the nature will be visible from above the factories as well, and will create an interesting contrast between the hardness of the factories, and the veritable canyon of nature running between. It is important to emphasize that element of the green network, because the residents of the housing area and high profile visitors at the hotel and conference center will have a constant view over a unique landscape of glass and foliage.
Environmental Impact: To help achieve a level of sustainability, the factory roofs are angled. This formal gesture makes it possible to allow soft northern light into the work spaces, contributing to a better human experience within the building. That also helps reduce the energy load, because less electricity is needed to light the interior.
The angle of the roofs is also optimized to take advantage of the solar angle at the site. At the times of the year with the greatest solar exposure, all of the solar panels will have direct exposure to the sun, without allowing disruptive shadows to interrupt work on the factory floor.
The administrative blocks are also fitted with screens to modulate light into the interior, to achieve correct light levels and avoid over heating.
Housing Concept: Contemporary workers’ housing for employees is often linked to the factory. This scheme has moved away from that concept by placing a green network full of recreation, social interaction, urbanity, and nature in between the places where people live and work. This makes the experience much more complete, and can contribute to workers being more satisfied and productive.
At a smaller scale, it’s important those those same principles of the site plan are included in the schemes for the apartment blocks and even the individual units. Mixes of scales and functions create a vibrant atmosphere, and one that is more likely to be safe, active, and happy. Because of the variable form of the housing units, each of the apartment blocks includes a number of shared spaces that helps to improve the community. There are outdoor terraces, and connecting bridges that link people to their neighbors and also provide spaces to enjoy a close relationship to nature.
The creation of those different spaces is achieved because there is a mix of apartment sizes. The shape of those units is slightly different and creates overlaps where different social functions can fit, however, the units remain functional, and structurally efficient, because there are shared structural walls and service cores that can stack all the plumbing and services in a very simple way.
Connected Living: All of the residents in the housing area have access to the green network of nature. Part of this is achieved because the ground floor of many of the buildings is minimized, to allow the plants and movement to flow through the apartments at the ground floor. This helps tie together the different zones of the ground floor, and also creates some very apparent green connections that can help spur commercial activity as well as community activities.
Between apartment buildings, there is also a more vertical green connection. Rather than keeping the residents isolated from one another, this scheme provides different routes to pass between buildings. The hanging gardens give everyone communal access to nature, but also provide opportunities for residents to meet eachother in different ways.
An additional benefit of this element is that people are immersed in the social space between buildings. Where there are markets and social areas on the ground floor, there can be more social areas on the different floating levels and an injection of nature throughout the entire three dimentional urban area.
Apartment Units: The apartment units are designed to be functional and efficient. Those priorities have resulted in some very simple, yet effective units, with all of the modern ammenities of a middle-class apartment.
There is very little wasted space in the aparments, partly because there is effectively no hallway space. The units also utilize an open kitchen plan to save space, while also creating a larger living area where families or roommates can socialize together. The bathrooms are compact but complete, and the bedrooms also have enough space to include a bed, desk, and closet.
The 6-person apartment is two levels, which allows for a larger double height living area. This is an important element when 6 people are living together, because the volume will keep the communal living room spacious, and it allows more light to the interior space.
The facade has been detailed to include large panels of glass and metal which emphasize the horizontal nature of the buildings. To shade the windows from too much sun, there are operable screens that allow residents to personalize their living arrangement as well.
5 Star Hotel: The hotel is a cube form that has been carved into, in order to maximize sun exposure, while also optimizing views for the varied hotel rooms. A triangle shaped atrium cuts through the cube, opening up the volume, also giving all rooms their own balcony. The sun highlights the entrance at ground floor, which is elevated, avoiding any visual og virtual barriers with the surrounding green scape of the apartment complex. A pool at the ground floor entrance under the hotel reflects daylight, creating a calm yet exclusive atmosphere when arriving to the hotel. The hotel is oriented towards the sun, and the building form twists so to accommodate the high sun light at summer time, and lower light during winter. Hotel suites are located on the corner axes of the nearby roads, the outer ones overlook the urban street scape, and the internal ones towards the atrium facing the apartment.
A green membrane of hanging gardens wrap the hotel and completes the cube form of the building. The membrane creates a more intimate feeling within the hotel, and a clear effort was maintain a close connection to the natural element that binds the entire project.
Convention Center: The design of the convention center embraces the essential functions at its heart. Two rectangle shaped boxes, one nested inside of the other, are elevated above ground, similiar to the hotel, create a open and welcoming arrival for guests. The inner box contains the convention booth floors and other additional meeting rooms. The outer box serves as the circulation zone, tying the functions together and creating a double facade which is perceived in the detail of the facade.
The circulation ramps by the outer facade connect the different functions but also serve as meeting points and places for conversation between meetings and conferences. They lead all the way to the top where the roof park is situated. From there, guests can enjoy their break times in an green environment overlooking the urban area, creating a small elevated oasis, isolated from the bustling street level.
The primary auditorium is placed at the top floor and can be opened up towards the roof park creating a sort of amphitheater. A service core cuts through the building making for an easy access if guest want a direct route to a special function, without having to ascend via the circulation ramps. Like the hotel, a network of green and water elements helps tie the building into the the urban city scape of housing and commercial spaces and offices.
Corporate Block: The form of the office block combines aspects of the other buildings in the masterplan, responding to the scale and form of the surrounding program to help unite the newly established context. Similar to the housing plan, the office block adopts a European-like urban scale with mid-rise buildings that link together. This type of building maintains a connection to the ground level from all offices, and helps create a lively streetscape. Also like the other blocks, there is a clear heirarchy of internal streets, with a strong urban edge on the street with shops and cafes, a more intimate interior street for the users of the building, and a green street that rings the courtyard park.
The offices’ layout is similar to that of the Lotus Icon Tower, with narrow floor plates that allow lots of natural light from the outside, as well as indirect light from atriums in each block. There are a series of shared cores containing bathrooms and vertical circulation, and those cores also help offer a degree of flexibility. Because all of the blocks are connected in a single super-structure, offices can change between 250m2 and 1000m2, without any strucural changes to the building.
Courtyard Park: The perimeter office block surrounds a large courtyard park. This park offers places for recreation, with paths, water features, grass lawns, and groves of trees, and it serves as a secluded oasis within the larger planned industrial area. The lake in the middle, besides serving a recreational purpose, also serves an environmental one. During the wet season, the landscape can help to collect and filter the rain water, reducing the impact of extreme weather cycles.
The inner part of the courtyard has connection to the commercial functions on the ground floor helping create a ring of more urban activity within the whole area. This area is important for entertaining clients, but also providing places outside of the office to socialize and engage in recreational activities. Because the the area inside is completely enclosed, it is possible to secure the park, and reserve it for specific functions when required.
Lotus Tower: The client for this project sought to have an iconic tower inspired by the lotus flower. Tradionally, the lotus flower symbolizes purity and beauty in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Clean, Scandinavian aesthetics will help the tower to stand out among the industrial context throughout the entire industrial development, and it will be reflected in the materials as well as the form. Compared to the roughness and utility of the industrial functions, the tower will be very fine and light, with lots of glass and a reflective core to help the building lightly float above the other buildings.
The offices are oriented radially around a core and an atrium that will be full of greenery, to further tie the building into the natural scheme that runs throughout the rest of the entire project’s other functions. That layout is also the primary reference to the lotus flower. While reflecting that inspiration in form, it will also emphasize a distinctively Nordic simplicity. From a functional standpoint, the flexibility afforded by these rings of office space ensure that as the primary tenants and other different companies change and grow, that they will be able to shift their usage of the office space as well.
Interior Atrium: By shifting the floor plates, a variable atrium space is created. This space unites the building vertically, but also helps to define mini communities within the tower. These small zones are, at most, five stories tall, which helps maintain a close connection to a type of ’ground’ level all the way to the top. Slim, vertical bamboo trees are to be planted within the shifting atrium space. This will also help span the distances between floors, but will also be mirrored in the cladding of the elevator and service core, creating the illusion of a completely organic and green spine within the tower.
Outdoor Terraces: The shifting floorplates also result in a number of outdoor spaces for employees. The outdoor terraces lack the vertical greenery of the interior atrium, so as not to obstruct daylight, but they also can provide shading during the hot summer months in China and protection from the rain.
Vertical Lobbies: Every five floors, there is a rotation in the floorplate. These exceptional floors are places where different users in the building can interact, share ideas, entertain clients, socialize, or eat together. The vertical lobbies are taller than the other floors, which from the exterior, helps to dissolve the building volume, and expose the transparency of the tower. The rotation also helps to emphasize the concept of the lotus, where the overlapping floors begin to mimic the geometry of the flower. From one of these levels, the elaborate shape of the interior atrium space becomes especially apparent.
Optimal Floor Ring: In the same way that the industrial buildings are optimized to be efficient and productive workplaces, so too are the floor plans of the Lotus Tower designed to accomodate a modern and effective office culture. Around the central core, a very narrow ring of office floor area allows for a unique and effective work environment. Each employee maintains close contact with natural daylight but also indirect light from the continuous, shifting atrium.
These conditions have been shown to contribute to employee productivity and satisfaction, and should encourage interaction between people on each of the different levels of the building as well. The depth of the floor plate is specifically designed to be flexible enough to provide open office space, meeting areas, social spaces, larger offices, and also shared lobby areas. While the depth of the floor plate is extremely functional, it also has some interesting characteristics, from the exterior. It’s narrow width means that light can pass all the way through, into the building. This will help keep the interior plants healthy, but will also create an extremely transparent and light building. In a context full of industrial functions, it will stand out as an especially clean and elegant tower.