We all know that buildings don't always turn out like the renderings. Last-minute changes and real-life materials can all cause discrepancies between the vision and reality of a project. In our weekly Flash Forward Friday feature, we take a look at how different projects stack up.

Nanchang is the capital of Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. About five million people reside in the prefecture, a population figure that is dwarfed by megacities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Despite its comparably small size, the city has become a prominent railway hub due to its location between the resilient South and East China regions. Like most urban areas in the country, Nanchang's skyline has enormously expanded in recent years. The ten tallest buildings in the city have all been completed in the past five years, including the 239-metre International Finance Center, which formed the highest peak in the cityscape until 2015. That was the year the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza officially opened.

Rendering of the Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza, image via Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The elegant two-tower complex is the centrepiece of a new mixed-use development zone in the city. A pair of low-rise structures comprising retail and conference facilities is situated below the towering 303-metre twin skyscrapers. Renderings for the project showed the organically shaped towers twisting 45 degrees to optimize ground-level access while aligning the office floor plates to the Ganjiang River. The illustrations also portrayed the towers clad in reflective glazing, with the crowns receiving a more transparent window treatment. 

The completed Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza, image by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill via CTBUH

The final product had some noticeable departures from the early artistic drawings, partly due to an unexpected height increase — occurring midway through the construction process — that pushed the tower to supertall status from 289 metres. Each cold-bent glazing panel was warped to achieve a smooth and luminous appearance, but the apex of the tower instead implements a pattern of precisely spaced, largely opaque, operable glass louvers. The openness of the top maximizes permeability to minimize ground-level wind loading. The shade of the glass also appears less metallic and takes on a bluer tint in reality. The 100-metre separation between the two towers of the Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza, which are perfectly framed from a nearby park, will ensure the skyscrapers remain a landmark in the city for years to come.