Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1
“Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” Master Plan Competition _1st prize
The “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” competition design for the master plan is based on the concept of tropical
skyscrapers as Shade Machines with a Social Bracket connecting the towers and the street level with a horizontal
structure containing public programs and a rooftop water garden.
The Social Bracket gathers the public programs from all four towers, combining them as one continuous element
that links the four sites with the city streets and pedestrian traffic. Supporting programs for the towers, such as
cafeterias and gyms, are combined in the Social Bracket and enhanced with cultural programs such as art
galleries, auditoriums, and a cinema. The Social Bracket’s sculpted form allows it to negotiate between
environmental restrictions and the requirements of the public programs. It features a continuous roof garden park
that collects storm water and recycles all the greywater from the four skyscrapers. Roof garden ponds and
plantings utilize the combined storm water and greywater after passage through a central ultraviolet filter system.
A public route connects the subway into the Social Bracket, linking directly to all four towers. Connecting across
the Stock Exchange Plaza, the new elevated bracket acts as an urban interface between the business-centric
district to the south and the residential area to the north.
The design for the four towers as Shade Machines utilizes circular building footprints to maximize the interior
space and open views while minimizing the exterior envelope. The optimized office floors are connected via
double-height and triple-height social spaces on alternating sides of the towers. Automatic solar tracking screens
made of perforated PV cells make one full rotation per day around the circumference of each building, collecting
enough PV energy to cool the towers completely. Always oriented towards the sun, the moving shades harvest
solar energy and block solar heat gain, their louvered sections tilting to horizontal orientation at noon to gather
maximum sunlight. The one-meter deep louvers block high-angle solar gain and bounce diffused natural light onto
the ceilings deep into the floor plate. The screens’ full rotation per day allows the towers to act as an urban clock
with synchronized rotation in time even on cloudy days.
architect
Steven Holl Architects
Steven Holl, Chris McVoy (design architect)
Li Hu (project advisor)
Human Tieliu Wu (project architect)
Marcus Carter, Joseph Kan, Gabriela Pinto, Dominik Sigg,
Asami Takahashi (project team)
structural engineer
Guy Nordenson and Associates
site sustainability consultant
Transsolar
