The dramatic speed and scale of urbanisation in China has spawned a building frenzy of idiosyncratic towers, massive super-blocks and undefined urban spaces.
By appointing Zaha Hadid Architects as master planners for the residential neighbourhood for 50,000 people, SohoChina is making an important move to reverse this urban trend. The design provides a ‘fluid’ response to the programme that integrates buildings with public spaces and the natural environment, allowing different uses to overlap and activities to interconnect. The building forms themselves are equally dynamic. Towers, courtyards and ‘boomerang’ structures – are distributed across the site, exploiting views and orientation, embracing the open spaces and creating visual and physical connections to surrounding districts.
Hadid and Schumacher’s vision is for a crescendo of clustering buildings that mark the skyline and create a real centre to the urban quarter, providing a clear identity for this new part of Beijing when seen from afar. At ground level, the residential buildings, offices, shops and commercial facilities contain and enclose the fluid open spaces, creating a variety of scale and intimacy for the resident and visitor to the area. The density of development ebbs and flows according to location, contributing to a rich texture of experience as one moves across the neighbourhood, from the lower buildings embracing the landscape to the taller towers at the urban heart of the area.
Developer: Soho China, Beijing | Master plan Architects: Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher, London | Urban Consultant: Ricky Burdett, London | Phase I architects: Zaha Hadid Architects, MVRDV, Rotterdem
www.zaha-hadid.com
www.patrikschumacher.com
www.mvrdv.nl