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Type: Shopping mall with office buildings Location: Beijing Client: Huihuang Real Estate Ltd. Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Chen Song, Jiang Xiao Fei, Guo Zhi Fang. Jia Yuan, Xin Hong, Mo Lisheng, Yang Zhong Hui, Zen Zhao Ying, Yuan Duo, Ma Qin, Qin Qin, Zhang Rui, Su Yue, Wu Yun, Zhang Yu Hua, Lu Ming, Jiang Nan Collaborator / associate: HAYA architects Floor area / size: 180.000 sqm First design: 2007-10-21 Start building: 2005-11-01 Completion: 2007-09-01 Status: realized

The Huihuang International Plaza is a building complex of 180.000m2 in size and accommodates shopping, offices, residential, conference, a hotel and parking. Four of the five towers were initially designed as office towers. Because of changing market conditions, three of the four had to change into residential towers over night. As a clause, the design had to be able to change back to offices before the building was completed. To anticipate on ever changing requirements, an architectonic concept is developed in which residential blurs with office. This ‘blurring’ makes both residential and office in representation possible. ‘Blurring’ is achieved by a changing relieve between stone and glass; the foundations of the buildings being more stone, the tops more glass. This pattern aims to visually dissolve the program, as well as the height of the towers. The architectonic concept is strengthened by economics: the higher the floor, the more view is offered, the higher the market value can be.

Location: Xidan, Beijing Client: Meisheng Real Estate Ltd. Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Wopke Tjipke Schaafstal, Bobby de Graaf, Chen Song, Yang Zhong Hui and Jia Yuan Floor area / size: 400 sqm First design: 2007-10-20

2007-10-01 Selling center of Xidan shopping nears completion

Water Stone is a high-end residential project located in the centre of Beijing. The assignment asked for a 400sqm so-called sales centre; an exhibition-like pavilion in which the apartments will be sold before they are actually built. The building has to accommodate private meetings like closing financial agreements and signing contracts while at the same time it has to seduce the public to enter. The building aims to express this ambiguous tension of simultaneously being public and private.

A standard rectangular building envelop is reshaped into an envelop that has three straight and two inclined faces. The reshaping creates a volume with two strong directions: one side seems to open up towards a street corner while the other side seems to close the building of. To emphasize the tension between public and private, the inclined elevations are executed in transparent glass while the straight walls are executed in a translucent double layered skin. Where the building opens up towards the public completely, a narrow casted view over a 1:100 scale model of the Water Stone is offered.

Type: Office and commercial space Location: Beijing Client: Golden Star Real Estate Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Wopke Tjipke Schaafstal, Bobby de Graaf, Chen Song, Guo Zhi Fang, Jia Yuan, Jao Peng, Xin Hong, and Li Jia Collaborator / associate: HAYA architects Floor area / size: 60.000 sqm First design: 2007-05-01 Start building: 2007-11-01 Status: under construction

Twist is a twin-building located near the East 5th ring road. The building will contain mostly service apartments. These apartments can accommodate start-up companies, which makes that the building has to blend between apartment and office building. The design-strategy follows three steps: projecting a typical NS orientated Beijing slab, rotating and finally twisting the slab in order to optimize daylight and view. The twisted slab is taken as a starting point to manipulate the buildings massing proportions, following the analogy that people prefer to live in a tower over living in a slab. Towards the new city street, the building will follow a smaller scale to enclose a square. Towards the South side of the site, the buildings will take on a more urban scale. To increase the diversity of the apartments, floors are proposed with three different window-heights.  Metaphorically, the twin building resembles two dynamic Dragons encompassing a shining pearl.

Location: ZPARK Beijing Client: Beijing Century Real Estate Team: John van de Water with Chen Song, Wopke Schaafstal, Lui Gui Feng, Li Gui Feng and Bart Reuser, Marij Floor area / size: 55.000 m2 First design: 2007-01-01 Start building: august 2007

2007-11-10 Construction at full speed 2007-08-07 Construction started

This IBM research-office building is situated in a new, green IT-development zone in North-west Beijing. The given site is elliptical and according to the urban plan, buildings are to be single entities. IBM aims to provide a healthy working environment, as part of their vision to provide a productive environment.

To maximize the building area, the building envelop follows the site restrictions and therefore is elliptically shaped. To stimulate a healthy environment, the building aims to maximize its relations with its green surrounding landscape.  

As such, the building consists of one two-story ellipse that rests on four smaller ellipses. The top two floors contain offices; the collective program is concentrated in the smaller ellipses.

The meandering space between the ground floor ellipses opens up towards the surrounding landscapes and accommodates the central lobby and three internal gardens.

Type: Student dwellings Location: Haidian District, Beijing, China Client: Beijing Normal University Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Floor area / size: 49.000 sqm Competition: Invited competition 2006, second prize First design: 2006-09-24

Chinese university dormitories are strictly divided worlds of girls and boys. For this typical university dormitory, 12 sqm rooms are shared by four students; each room has a closed balcony.

The building will be accommodate a total of 3.500 students.  In order to maximize the distance between boys and girls, two L-shaped buildings are situated opposite each other. The boys’ dorm is situated to the south; it is two floors lower and by reducing the building height sunlight is guaranteed to reach the two enclosed courtyards.

The two buildings are connected by a recreation program that can be used from both sides.  The elevation concept is derived from nature and abstractly resembles the growing of ivy. Balconies embrace the building and create a play between the individual rooms and the building complex as a whole.

Type: Kindergarten Location: Chaoyang district, Beijing Client: Xintian Real Estate Ltd Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens with Chen Song, Ma Qing, Zai Xin, Floor area / size: 3.000 sqm First design: 2005-06-14 Status: preliminary design

In a large new residential area, NEXT was commissioned to design a series of public buildings, including a kindergarten, school, club and sales centre.  

The first building to be executed is the kindergarten, which must be ready to receive 400 children in 2006. The kindergarten is created through three conceptual architectural steps: a projection of the typical Chinese school on the site, all classrooms face South.

The introduction of the common room transforms the traditional linear design of the school in an unexpected way: by 'pushing' the volume of the common room through the rectangular structure, all the floors are displaced along a curve in a stepped manner, creating an amphitheatre-like space inside the building, and creating a canopy from the overhang of the upper floors on the outside of the building.  

The design organizes all classrooms around an internal space, the children's amphitheatre. This theatre is the social heart of the building: here children meet, see, play and are stimulated to learn. In this design, inside and outside are inextricably linked: form and content are one.    

Type: High-tech office and production space Location: Lufthansa Area, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens, Chen Song, Wang Bo and Zang Rui Floor area / size: 350.000 sqm Competition: 2005 invited competition, second prize First design: 2004-12-12 Status: Preliminary Design

Watchdata is a relatively young IT-company specializing in data security. The 62.000sqm new headquarters will accommodate the company’s general office departments, research labs and workshops.

Given the young age of the company and the enormous growth of the workforce, the design aims to create the conditions for meaningful communication between the individual employees and departments.

The program is organized according to a clear hierarchy: representative program faces south, factories face north. The different functions and departments are connected on the first floor by means of an ‘interaction-floor’. All public functions are concentrated on this floor, making it the company’s main square.

The ‘interaction floor’ encloses four internal courtyards that are adorned by two special pavilions: a meeting diamond and a sports-pavilion. The companies ‘W’-logo can be seen again in the elevation and construction; this is where logo, architecture and construction synthesize.

Location: Beijing | Haidian District Client: Beijing Gem Real Estate Development Co. Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens with Chen Song First design: 2004-05-23

Luiming is a high-income, low-rise residential neighbourhood. The assignment asked for the design of a 700 sqm sales center. The site is characterized by its special natural beauty: a view of the mountains and the presence of old trees.  

To exploit these qualities, a building was developed in which two architectural routes are incorporated into one single volume. To create this volume, the three core functions of the sales center -exhibitions, offices and services- are organized parallel to each other. Then, the exhibition section is lifted onto the office volume, while the volume housing the service functions is sunk in underground.  

As a result, two architectural routes arise: one outside route leading over the roof of the building and one route inside the building. Both routes are akin to walking along a mountain trail. The outside route leads to a viewing platform, from which the neighbourhood can be overlooked; the inside route leads along exhibitions to a void, which offers a framed view out over the mountains.