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Landscape Architects: ASPECT Studios
- Area: 7811 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Wenjie Wang, Stephen Buckle, arch-exist photography
Text description provided by the architects. ASPECT Studios has knitted a Shenzhen skyscraper into the urban fabric of the city’s Qianhai district by creating an urban retreat comprising a lush landscape and an active urban boundary.
The project sets a new standard for office and residential environments in Shenzhen, by emphasizing the experience of its users, rather than grandeur and spectacle. The HONY Tower Urban Retreat is a detailed, tactile space that stimulates the senses. Composed of a set of outdoor spaces that have a quiet, human-scale atmosphere, the park offers a biophilic environment that insulates visitors from the busy surroundings through an increased connection to nature.
The basis of the design is the idea that the landscape is the foundation of the Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates-designed HONY Tower. Where the tower meets the ground, it passes the baton to the landscape, converting the scale of the built experience into a more human one. The landscape protects its occupants from the hustle and bustle of the streets by creating a secluded retreat, utilizing new planting to create a green threshold, defined by detailed active edges populated with meticulously crafted stone sofas. At the same time, the municipal roads and new multi-functional community space are integrated with the new landscape, making the space a natural extension of the street.
A refined, robust, and unified expression of materiality is used consistently throughout the landscape, connecting the horizontal experience with the architectural expression of the HONY Tower. At the same time, these material choices work to address the environmental pressures faced in Shenzhen, where summers are hot and humid and beset by typhoons.
Stephen Buckle, Studio Director at ASPECT Studios, said the design creates a sheltered, intimate experience. “The project responds to the local microclimate, the intensity of city life, and a desire to foster a more fine-grain connection to the two high-rise towers and their urban scale and proportions.”
