GALAXY SOHO BY ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS

 

Zaha Hadid Architects have recently completed the Galaxy SOHO office and retail building in the historical centre of Beijing, China. Zaha Hadid joined Soho China's Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi, with 15,000 guests from China and around the world, to celebrate the completion of Galaxy Soho, Beijing.

 

"Working on Galaxy for Soho China was very exciting. The design responds to the varied contextual relationships and dynamic conditions of Beijing. We have created a variety of public spaces that directly engage with the city; reinterpreting the traditional urban fabric and contemporary living patterns into a seamless urban landscape inspired by nature," explains Hadid. "The natural rhythms and flows of the city, of the environment and of the people have been integrated within the design to define its formal composition."

 

 

Five continuous, flowing volumes coalesce to create an internal world of continuous open spaces within Galaxy Soho – a new office, retail entertainment complex devoid of corners or abrupt transitions – a re-inventing of the classical Chinese courtyard which generates an immersive, enveloping experience at the heart of Beijing.

These volumes generate what ZHA deems "a panoramic architecture", without corners or abrupt transitions breaking the fluidity of its formal composition. "The great interior courts of the project are a reflection of traditional Chinese architecture where courtyards create an internal world of continuous open spaces," the architects point out.

"Here, the architecture is no longer composed of rigid blocks, but instead comprised of volumes which generate a deep sense of immersion and envelopment. As users enter deeper into the building, they discover intimate spaces that follow the same coherent formal logic of continuous curvelinearity."

Galaxy Soho constitutes a new office, retail and entertainment complex for the heart of this great Chinese city – matching its grand scale. The complex comprises five continuous flowing volumes, set apart yet fused or linked by a sequence of stretched bridges.

Each volume adapts outwards, generating a panoramic architecture devoid of corners or abrupt transitions. Galaxy Soho reinvents the great interior courts of Chinese antiquity to create an internal world of continuous open spaces. Here, architecture no longer incorporates rigid blocks, but instead comprises volumes which coalesce to achieve continuous mutual adaptation and fluid movement between buildings.

Shifting plateaus impact upon each other to generate a deep sense of immersion and envelopment, allowing visitors to discover intimate spaces as they move deeper in the building. The structure’s three lower levels contain retail and entertainment facilities, those above provide works spaces for innovative businesses of many kinds, while top levels are dedicated to bars, restaurants and cafes – many with views along the city’s great avenues.

 

 

The lower three levels of the building house public facilities for retail and entertainment. The levels immediately above provide work spaces for clusters of innovative businesses, while the top of the building houses bars, restaurants and cafés, while simultaneously offering views along one of the city's avenues. "These different functions are interconnected through intimate interiors that are always linked with the city, helping to establish Galaxy SOHO as a major urban landmark for Beijing," state the architects.

 

 

With its inclusive, organic design incorporating innovative public spaces, all available units in Galaxy Soho were sold in 2011. Zaha Hadid Architects continue to develop the Wangjing (Beijing) and Sky (Shanghai) projects for Soho China.

 

Location: Beijing, China

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects

Design: Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher

Project Director: Satoshi Ohashi

Project Architect: Yoshi Uchiyama

Execution Team: Stephan Wurster, Michael Hill, Samer Chamoun, Eugene Leung, Rita Lee, Lillie Liu, Rolando Rodriguez-Leal, Wen Tao, Tom Wuenschmann, Seung-ho Yeo, Shuojiong Zhang, Michael Grau, Shu Hashimoto, Shao-Wei Huang, Chikara Inamura, Lydia Kim, Yasuko Kobayashi, Wang Lin, Yereem Park, Kelly Lee

Gross Floor Area: 332,857m²

21 CAKE HEADQUARTERS BY PEOPLE’S ARCHITECTURE OFFICE

 

Chinese firm People's Architecture Office has recently designed the new '21 cake headquarters' for the popular gourmet pastry franchise in Beijing.

The design for the headquarters of 21 Cake, a popular gourmet cake franchise, relies on the interaction of the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. 

The relationship of colour to form was of central significance to Kandinsky's thinking. In 1925, Wassily Kandinsky created the oil painting entitled ‘Yellow, Red, Blue’, a remarkable display of colourful geometric art. Wassily Kandinsky painted this composition during the years he spent at the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture where he was teaching; they would become the most productive years in his career.

De Stijl was a Dutch art movement in which Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld were among the principal members. De Stijl emphasized pure abstraction and the reduction of everything to the essentials of form and color. Everything was simplified to vertical and horizontal lines and primary colors. Unlike many contemporary movements, De Stijl was a collective project, not a political or social movement.

Selected walls of the office, namely those along circulation areas, are made of laminated colored glass.

These glass panels of primary colors are ‘layered’ to create a full spectrum of changing colors.

As one walks through the spaces of the office, changing vantage points in combination with natural and artificial light and reflections produce dramatic effects. 

A double height central atrium topped with a skylight brings in light through the layers of color along the staircase and glass bridge on the second floor.

Conference tables and mobile work tables are designed and produced by our sister company PIDO.

The office is fairly plain from the outside, but adding this simple detail inside gives it more character than most office conversions.

Architects: People’s Architecture Office

Location: Legend Town Creative Industry Park, Ciyunsi Bridge, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Design Team: Liu Xiujuan, Liang Shaoyi, Chen Yixuan, Emily Kwak, Cui Yujing

Project Year: 2012

Project Area: 457.0 sqm

Client: 21 Cake

Photographs: Courtesy of People’s Architecture Office

OVO BY ODEAUBOIS

A sensory experience to live, in the heart of a luminous egg, symbol of birth, unity and perfection. 

An installation by ACT lighting design (lighting & scenography) and Odeaubois (sculpture) at DITAN PARK Beijing.

The purpose of OVO is to offer an art object, global and multi-sensory in scope, to which a dimension of a luminous event is added, provided by the plays of light and the visual and acoustic animations.

The visitor is invited to walk on the water to reach the interior, as if to vanish into a metaphysical mist.

The watery surface reflects the egg-like structure, the lighting, and also the silhouettes of the visitors which bring the surface to life by their passage.

Seen from inside, the sense of intensity, of being drawn towards the sky, underlines the dynamism conveyed by the forms of the structure.

The framing features a lamellar lattice secured with semicircular lozenges to distribute the tensile forces and allow the use of a poplar wood, a lighter material.

Scenographer marcos vinals was introduced into the project to generate a dynamic setting which culminates with an open ceiling plane to view the sky.

NATIONAL CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS BY PAUL ANDREU

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) is located in the heart of old Beijing, close to the Great Hall of the People, Tian'anmen Square and the ancient Forbidden City.

It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. Construction started in December 2001 and the inaugural concert was held in December 2007.

The structure, surrounded by an artificial lake and green lawns and gardens, is seen as a cultural island in the middle of a lake.

When illuminated at night the curved cut in the titanium shell is reminiscent of a stage curtain being pulled back.

The dome measures 212 meters in east–west direction, 144 meters in north–south direction, and is 46 meters high. The main entrance is at the north side.

From the north entrance you descend a grand staircase to the Underwater Corridor that stretches 80 meters beneath the outdoor lake. The glass ceiling allows the light to shimmer through the lake water. 

The titanium and glass shell, in the shape of an ellipsoid, houses an opera house, a concert hall, and two theaters, as well as public spaces.

The Opera House, seating 2,398, is the Centre’s largest venue hosting elaborate productions.

The Concert Hall, seating 2,019, hosts symphony orchestras and national music performances.

The Concert Hall can accommodate up to 120 musicians and the chorus section up to 180 performers.

The Theater, seating 1,035, hosts traditional Chinese operas and modern dramas.

A multi-functional theater consists of two lifting platforms that can be elevated as needed.

The floor in the huge Foyer is covered in stone from 10 different regions in China, the interior walls are lined with tens of thousands of panels of jequitiba, also known as Brazilian rosewood.

The huge floor to ceiling glass curtain bathes the interior in natural light or reveals the city's lights at night. Escalators take visitors to the many different levels.

Conceptually meant to evoke a rising sun or a pearl, the structure is often referred to as the egg, it also recalls the Cenotaphto Sir IsaacNewton, Etienne-Louis Boullée.

POLLUTION OVER BEIJING

The relationship between smog and architecture is not one that critics or scholars -- or architects themselves, for that matter -- have traditionally given much thought. But in the pollution-clogged Chinese capital, the link is nearly impossible to ignore.

Often exacerbated by more benign haze and fog and by periodic dust storms, smog acts as an always-shifting veil in Beijing, shrouding old and new architecture alike. 

It changes the personality and color of buildings and manipulates their outlines. Huge towers just four or five blocks away fade into oblivion.

Smog levels and the Beijing skyline are thoroughly intertwined: Not only have they risen in tandem during the city's growth spurt over the last two decades, but the construction of new skyscrapers is in part responsible for generating the haze that surrounds them when they're finished. [www.latimes.com]

Fifteen years ago, the air quality in Beijing was probably even worse than today. Nobody saw good air quality as an entitlement; now people's ideology has changed.

If you think about recent social conflicts – land disputes and environmental issues – the government tries to use old ways to deal with these: they try to deal with it in an isolated way, to buy off people's dissent.

But if the government doesn't allow some kind of institutional participation, then no matter how much they compensate those who are losing land, people will feel there are problems behind the scenes. [www.guardian.co.uk]

In Beijing the situation has become so bad the capital’s airport has repeatedly been forced to close temporarily in recent months as dense smog prevented take-offs and landings. Meanwhile, the air has been so thick that residents have struggled to see across the road.

Among the concerns about this well-documented public health hazard is the response — or, rather, lack of response — of the Chinese government. The controversy has centered on PM 2.5, the fine particles believed to pose the largest health risks since their small size (less than one-seventh the average width of a human hair) can lodge deeply into the lungs. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center has collected data on such particulate matter for the past five years but refused to make it public, preferring to release the readings of the larger PM 10 particles—which makes the air readings seem cleaner then they are.

This led to farcical situations where the government would declare the air ‘good’ or even ‘excellent’ when the opposite was true.

China, now the world’s largest carbon emitter, rightly gets a hard time for its pollution. But it rarely gets credit for its unilateral moves to deal with climate change.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies dominate the solar panel industry, thanks to hefty government investment, in both manufacturing and usage in the country itself and is increasing capacity rapidly. [www.science.time.com]