Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has been announced as the winner of the design competition to build Tower C at Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base — an important business and financial centre serving the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. Integrating clusters of corporate headquarters within a global technology hub accommodating 300,000 employees each day, the development will include venues for international conferences, exhibitions, and other cultural programming. The headquarters base will incorporate residential developments, a transportation center, botanical grasslands, and even a coastal zone with wetlands.
Tower C by Zaha Hadid Architects within the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base responds to its location at the intersection of the city’s planned north-south green axis and Shenzhen’s east-west urban corridor. Connecting directly with its adjacent park and plazas which transform into a terraced landscape extending upwards within its two towers, the design invites the public into the heart of the building where cultural and leisure attractions are housed in sweeping bridges that tie the towers together and give panoramic views of the city.
Served by the expanding Shenzhen Metro network, Tower C’s stepped podium integrates with the park to create a new public space for this dynamic city that has grown to become a global centre of technology innovation. Uniting the park’s landscapes with the civic plazas of the tower’s lower levels provides direct pedestrian access and daylight to the public transport interchange below ground. Prioritising pedestrians, the tower’s design also includes extensive bicycle parking and charging facilities.
ZHA explains that the project’s design was informed by 3D modelling tools that optimize efficiencies in architectural massing, orientation, and façade-to-floor ratios. The result is a ‘multi-dimensional vertical city’ that comprises two towers that climb to a height of nearly 400 meters (1,312 feet). The building accommodates column-free naturally-lit office space, shopping, entertainment, and dining amenities, a hotel, a convention center, and cultural facilities with exhibition galleries.
From an environmental perepctive, the tower’s double-insulated, unitized glass curtain wall steps the glazing as vertical channels for self-shading and incorporates ventilating registers within the channels that draw outside air through operable cavities. Indoor environmental controls will adjust in real time to reduce energy consumption, while aquaponics gardens on all terraced levels will biologically filter contaminants from the local environment. The design also incorporates water-collection and recycling, as well as photovoltaics to harvest solar energy for the district.
Aquaponics gardens on all terraced levels will biologically filter contaminants from the local environment and low-volatile organic compound materials will be installed to minimise indoor pollutants and particulates. Continuing the district’s ambitions for optimal integration throughout all aspects of the development to increase efficiencies and well-being, Tower C’s procurement will also target embodied carbon reductions and recycled materials.