COFCO Plaza was built in 1996 and it occupies one of the best locations in the city; located 1 KM from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square along Jianguomen Street at the cross with Chang’an Avenue.
In determining the strategy for the re-development of the building we built on our root focus on the concept of ‘innovation through renovation’ that has guided our previous work on many innovative heritage and modern building transformations. Kokaistudios has worked to enrich the urban fabric by the re-purposing and re-examination of the potential of existing buildings. In addition we worked closely with the COFCO team to understand their brand and their culture and design a project that embraced and translated this culture into a spatial experience.
Article source: gmp · Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner
The Poly Greenland Plaza office complex, built to a design by architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), has been selected for the Award of Excellence of the 2020 CTBUH Awards in the Urban Habitat–District/Master Plan category, which qualifies it as a finalist in the Overall Category. The ensemble of office towers and commercial buildings forms a unique address in the city environment. A generous sequence of plazas and an open shopping arcade create diverse urban qualities that link the complex with its surroundings.
Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Magdalene Weiss
Competition Lead: Hao Yanli, Martin Friedrich
Competition Design Team: Di Miao-Weichtmann, Sebastian Schmidt, Tan Ling, Zhao Mengtong, Jin Tong,Christina Patt
Detailed Design Lead: Sun Yajin
Detailed Design Team: Chen Jingcheng, Martin Friedrich, Saeed Granfar, He Xiaoshu, Li Xi, Liu Jinrui, Liu Yide, Katharina Schneider, Tan Ling, Yu Xiaoliang
Fuxing Park locates in the north of Middle Fuxing Road, shaded by oriental planes, while Roarc project “WE+lab” starts in the FUXING Plaza, an old three-storey building that seems to be out of place amongst theFrench garden. Our challenge lies in how to elegantly blend the project in the French grace and romance of the Fuxing Park.
Stepping once again into this park, Roarc team was overwhelmed with the astounding characteristics of the French garden: axis, axial symmetry, gridding, patterning, as well as the beautiful flowers, planes trees, pavilions and ponds. Our team determined to salute the only French garden with our design.
‘Reconnecting Urban Life with Nature Through A Flowing Shopping Experience’.
The sheer size of Megabangna shopping complex is as large as a small town. Its central building is perceived as a downtown, whereas Foodwalk zone on the east wing is portrayed as countryside with more green areas and canals. The new extension of retail zone located on the eastern periphery beyond the existing zone could then be conceptualized as a ‘Valley’, one of the most pleasant natural topography in which its intimate central space is enclosed by continuous frontage of lushly mountains.
The architectural concept of the new extension, ‘The Valley’, therefore derives from the geographic character of its metaphor. To create similar atmosphere to a natural valley, the layout of the new open-air mall is composed around a central courtyard space, in which a sunken plaza with an amphitheatre down below acts as a customers’ main social space for gathering and holding all kinds of events.
Apple today reopened its landmark Fifth Avenue store, located on the corner of Central Park, one of the greatest public urban spaces in the world. Set against the backdrop of the famous General Motors Building by Edward Durell Stone, the site has a long history; a sunken urban plaza in the 1960s that was filled-in at turn of the Millennium, it was later transformed in 2006 into one of the most photographed attractions in the city with the insertion of the iconic glass cube, Steve Jobs’ defining symbol for Apple Fifth Avenue.
Through the careful peeling back of layers of history and the sensitive restoration of the cube, Apple Fifth Avenue seeks to revive the plaza by making it more accessible from three sides, reinforcing the progressive and innovative spirit that is emblematic of Apple. The project is the result of a close collaboration between the design team at Apple led by chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive and the integrated design and engineering teams at Foster + Partners.
The new Charles Library at Temple University has opened its doors for the start of the Fall 2019 semester. Sited at the intersection of two major pedestrian pathways, Polett Walk and Liacouras Walk, and at the nexus of Temple’s Main Campus, the project anchors a new social and academic heart for the university’s diverse student body of over 39,000. Woven into the fabric of North Philadelphia, the building sits just one block off of Broad Street, the connecting artery to the city. Within its dynamic urban context, Snøhetta’s design, developed in collaboration with Stantec, reinterprets the traditional typology of the research library as a repository for books, integrating the building with a diversity of collaborative and social learning spaces. And in offering more than double the amount of study spaces than its 1960s predecessor, Paley Library, the 220,000-square-foot Library anticipates over 5 million annual visitors. By uniting a plethora of academic resources, disciplines, and cutting-edge technology under one roof, Charles Library stewards Temple’s progressive mission to provide equitable learning experiences for its students, its faculty, and the surrounding community.
Chengdu Bo’ya City Plaza designed by Aedas, is set at the heart of Tianfu New District in Chengdu. Boasting distinctive elevations, it is considered a landmark of Chengdu “Xinchuan Hi-Tech Innovation Park” jointly founded by China and Singapore. The project functions as an urban hub that connects main roads and transit systems within the city, establishing itself as a gateway to the overall community. Right from the beginning of design stage, Aedas Directors Chris Chen and Leon Liang have been determined to instill local features to this project with international visions.
Article source: gmp · Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner
A new high-rise building makes its impact on the skyline of Hangzhou, the Chinese metropolis with 9 million inhabitants. The 130-meter-high tower is part of the extension and redesign of the GDA Plaza, a business center in the traditional business quarter of the city, which includes a shopping mall and hotel. Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), who had previously won the competition, were in charge of the design and implementation.
West Lake is considered a focal point and special attraction of the old, traditional city of Hangzhou. Its exemplary cultivated landscape is an outstanding feature of this 9-million-person metropolis to the south-west of Shanghai and, in 2011, was designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. At Wulin Square, in the midst of the flourishing business center not far from the lake, the GDA Plaza Hotel and Business Center was reopened. As part of a redesign and extension, the existing complex with hotel and shopping mall was recreated and made into a completely new unit. The architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), who had previously won the competition in 2007, were in charge of the design and implementation. At one cor-ner, the GDA Plaza was substantially extended by a new 28-story building with a gross floor area of 57,500 square meters, whilst the existing main building was retained as far as possible but completely reorganized. This has created additional offices and commercial premises, as well as new leisure facilities such as cinemas and restaurants.
Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Magdalene Weiss
Project Leader Competition: Jörn Ortmann
Competition Design Team: Jan Blasko, Cai Lei, Cheng Ying, Sun Ya-jin, Zhu Honghao
Project Leader Detail Design: Chen Ying, Fan Xiaodi, Huang Meng
Detail Design Team: Mareike Asmus, Jiang Yi, Kong Rui, Claudius Lange, Mao Yuqi, Alexander Schober, Martin Seibel, Sun Ya-jin, Tian Jinghai, Wang Qing, Zhao Chonghan
Hybrid and holistic, Social House by Xintiandi is a multifunctional space comprising retail, F&B, and lifestyle elements. Positioned across two floors of the recently renovated Xintiandi Plaza in Shanghai’s central business district, the venue has been designed for openness and exchange, bringing the vitality of outside, in. Elegant and feminine in aesthetic, it takes visitors on a layered journey that caters to mind, body, and soul. From the group behind Xintiandi, a pioneering urban renewal project and car-free commercial district in central Shanghai, Social House immerses visitors into a narrative crafted through circulation and flow, punctuated by focal points of activity. Together, these elements create a unique, constantly evolving destination that is fast becoming a cultural and lifestyle hotspot in China’s most dynamic metropolis.
Article source: gmp · Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner
To the west of the city center, at the bay of Shenzhen, a new business district known as Super Bay City is being developed. The urban zoning plan for the area between the bay and the Beizhoushan Wetland Park specifies a high-density urban quarter. In future, a broad north-south axis referred to as Central Park will link the oceanfront park with the wetlands to the north and include landscaping, plazas, and cultural facilities. In the block structure of the masterplan, the China Telling Communications Building occupies the north-east corner plot at the interface between Central Park and the wetland park.