Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2022
City Above the Clouds Multifunctional Office
by Gad
- A' Design Award 2022 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Hangzhou Xihu Investment&Greentown Real Estate CO.,Ltd
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 26,745
- Verification code 3B7D097051 · Verify this award
About City Above the Clouds Multifunctional Office
City Above the Clouds is a mixed-use office and commercial complex in Hangzhou. Four main buildings are stacked on two-storey circular commercial podiums, and the arrangement forms a central green park. The ground level has several entrances that connect the complex to the surrounding city. Glass curtain walls give the facades a calm and open appearance. A vertical greening system links shared spaces on different levels. The combination of work areas, shops and social spaces supports a balanced way of working and living.
Within the discourse of contemporary commercial architecture, gad's City Above the Clouds Multifunctional Office emerges as a significant contribution to the typology of integrated urban workplace environments, demonstrating how large-scale development can achieve both programmatic complexity and compositional coherence. The design appears to engage thoughtfully with the challenge of accommodating diverse functions including office, retail, and potentially residential or hospitality components within a unified architectural language characterized by crystalline transparency and rhythmic modular organization. The curtain wall system, executed with evident technical precision, transforms what could read as monolithic commercial mass into a luminous assembly that responds dynamically to changing atmospheric and lighting conditions, as evidenced in this twilight documentation where the interplay between reflected sky tones and interior warmth creates visual depth and activity across the facades. The stepped massing strategy suggests an awareness of both urban scale considerations and the creation of outdoor terraces or amenity spaces at various levels, potentially offering occupants direct connection to sky and horizon while mediating the transition between tower and surrounding context. The material palette of glass and what appears to be aluminum or painted steel framing maintains consistency across the varied building volumes, establishing formal unity while the differentiated massing creates visual interest and breaks down perceived scale. The street-level treatment with generous glazing and mature landscaping indicates attention to pedestrian experience and urban vitality at the ground plane. One might consider how this work participates in ongoing architectural conversations about workplace environments that prioritize natural light, visual connection, and the dissolution of boundaries between interior productivity and exterior environment.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The project is located in Hangzhou. It adopts the conceptual planning system with the theme of City Above The Clouds. Four main buildings are stacked on double-storey circular commercial podium buildings respectively to form a central green park. The commercial space on the first floor has multiple entrances connected to the city, creating a vibrant, three-dimensional and open ideal city.
The architects integrated the natural environment, hence creating the ideal town for the future. - Dimensions & Packaging
- The scale of buildings is human-based. People’ s movements and feelings in the architectural space are taken into consideration. The design includes different scales of space from large, medium to small. There are public, open and shared spaces, such as the courtyard formed by 60-meter-high buildings, some 6x6m platforms for communication and exchange; there are also customized apartments to provide individual and private spaces for different groups of people.
- Tags
- Future, Life, Scene, Share, Social
- Production Technology
- This design is highly practical, to which an indispensable part is the technical support and selection of materials. The glass used for the building facade is a result of careful comparison and screening for over a year with the developer’ s kind support. With curtain wall, large area of glass looks sophisticated, bringing an overall humble feeling to the buildings, further integrating them into the city.
- Design Challenge
- One of the biggest challenges of the project, on one hand, is that many life scenes and functions, especially social sharing spaces, can not be all placed in the horizontal plane due to site limitations. To solve this problem, the architects used a vertical greening system to connect multiple scenes and functions. On the other hand, it is also challenging to bring natural sunlight to the 60-meter-high atrium. The architects worked closely with the structure engineers and curtain wall designers to deliberate on the structure and curtain wall components. Finally the size and density of components are able to be reasonably controlled on the basis that the structure is feasible, so that higher level of comfort and permeability in the atrium is achieved. The public corridors at bottom of buildings, ranging from 9 to 15 meters wide, are not disturbed by columns to allow for unobstructed view as a result of frequent consultations with structure engineers.
- Project Duration
- The project started in 8 October 2017 in HangZhou, ZheJiang, and finished in 20 December 2020
- Operation Flow
- The architects initially aimed to create a futuristic form of architecture and at the same time to meet people’ s daily work and life needs, and therefore adopted a new approach of combination of buildings. Basically the buildings conform to the site property line and surround the courtyard inside. The main opening is at the southwest corner to face the city, and some smaller openings at other corners are where the complex breathes. Furthermore, compound function of offices and commercials creates various spaces, while life scenes of young people are implanted in consideration of sharing production resources, which results in a community type of living place, just like a magnetic field, that draws people together to communicate and exchange, and guides people toward a brand new way of work and life.
- Research
- Through information collection, field research and on-site interviews in the early stage of design, we found the project is close to Zhangzhou-Changzhou Expressway so that it plays an important role in displaying the city image. The surroundings of the site are mainly industrial parks from 1990s and there’ s no large- scale and intensive green space. Building functions are also unitary and fragmented. Unfortunately, with the advancements of Internet, young people prefer online connections to real communications in actual life scenes and spend remarkably less time in the nature. Overall, it’ s a pretty closed environment in lack of urban vitality.
- Inspiration
- Inspired by key words such as ideal city and future community, the architects created a futurist architectural form that focuses on openness, cooperation and sharing. The thoughts of architects is balance life and work. Attract the youth from online to offline to communicate with others and embrace nature, and provide a community living space. From the combination of office and commercial businesses to the sharing of production resources, creating a new way of working and living is what we need.
- Image Credits
- Main Image:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Southwest corner perspective view)
Image # 1:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Perspective view along XiYuan Seven Road)
Image # 2:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Aerial view)
Image # 3:Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Courtyard perspective view)
Image # 4: Photographer©YAOLI STUDIO 2021(Courtyard elevation view) - Patents
- Copyrights belong to gad, 2021.