Commissioned by Shanghai Lujiazui Development, the 535,500 square feet office building is located on Century Avenue in Shanghai’s Pudong district, the city’s modern financial and commercial hub.
The major tenants’ core business inspired the design, with diamond-shaped elements featured throughout. References are seen most prominently in the atrium’s glass skylight, the structural geometry of the entry canopy, and the main lobby floor.
The 15-story building provides space for members of the China Diamond Exchange, as well as other related and speculative tenants. In addition to office space on the upper levels, the building includes retail on the ground floor and a second floor that features the elevator lobby, exhibition space and a restaurant.
The building is conceived as two rectangular office slabs connected by a sky-lit atrium, with a large 66- by- 230 feet cable-supported net wall at each end. One tower is fully dedicated to the Diamond Exchange members and designed to provide them with secure transport from their below-grade parking spaces to their offices above. The adjacent tower serves the other tenants, with access through an open elevator tower in the center of the atrium.
The color palette of black, gray and red dominates the building and provides a cohesive image. The office slabs are treated in black, including the horizontal grille at the ends. This grille provides a monumental surface that disguises the intakes and exhausts of the mechanical system. Exposed metal elevator cabs, stainless-steel cables and other, more reflective surfaces lend a subtle contrast in gray. Select details provide punches of red, a color with positive connotations in Chinese culture.
The open elevator tower defines the focal point of the building, with three cabs traversing the atrium to sky bridges on each level that connect the two office blocks. The elevators’ activity is not only visible from the lobby but also from outside, through the cable-supported net walls running the full height of the building. This level of transparency adds a sense of energy to both the building and street life that is visible day and night.
Goettsch Partners is a Chicago-based architecture firm providing innovative architectural, interior, planning and building enclosure design services. With additional offices in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, the firm’s work spans four continents.
