G6 twist building
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 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.
IBM office and research center
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 Start building: august 2007
2008-05-10 Sneak preview 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.
