Huihuang Plaza
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.
Waterstone Sales Center
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.
