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China is no stranger to expressive supertalls, and the Baoneng Group is bringing two such towers to Shenyang in their seven-building Baoneng Shenyang Global Financial Centre Complex. The Atkins-designed Pearl of the North is well on its way to becoming the tallest in the complex and the city of Shenyang, not to mention one of the ten tallest in the country.
At 568 metres and 114 storeys, the Pearl of the North towers above the complex's 328-metre luxury hotel and office building, which is depicted to the right of the Pearl in the skyline rendering below. Both towers are currently under construction and expect to open their doors in 2018. Future phases of the project will include an additional five residential towers that connect to the current supertalls via a shared retail podium on a construction site that covers 1.07 million square metres.
The tower takes its name from the distinctive sphere that can be seen protruding from all four concave facades of the building's crown. The pearl itself is 50 metres in diameter and will be home to an executive club perched above the offices that occupy the tower below.
Site work on the $1.6 billion complex began in 2013, with a construction pit that descended as deep as 31 metres below ground. According to Baoneng, the tower's structure will contain over 400 million cubic metres of concrete and 10 million tons of steel, which is more more steel than you'll find in Herzog & de Meuron's Olympic Bird's Nest in Beijing. The tower is targeting LEED Gold Certification.
We'll be keeping an eye on this project as it continues to make its mark on the Shenyang skyline. Additional details and renderings can be found in the Database entries linked below. To join the discussion or share your photos, check out the associated Forum thread or leave a comment at the bottom of this page.
