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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.
Located a few kilometres south of the massive Ping An Finance Centre, the Shenzhen CFC Changfu Centre is situated mere blocks from the border with Hong Kong. Completed in 2016 and climbing to a height of 304 metres, the 68-storey tower just attains supertall status, and is ranked the fourth tallest building in the populous Chinese city.
Renderings of the project surfaced online in 2007, showing two volumes of distinct styles and massing. The towering office building would be joined by a disc-shaped 100-metre-tall apartment building, fused to the ground and each other by a large open plaza. The absence of a podium, common in large-scale building projects in China, allows for the unique shape of each tower to continue straight to the ground.
Construction on both projects began in unison, with a four-storey basement spanning the entire block. A composite frame of steel columns and beams provided the structural framework for the taller tower, which was then clad in a smooth curtain wall glazing system. The finished product closely aligns with what was promised; the floor plates are square yet rounded at their corners, with the tower itself bowing outwards in the middle. The perimeter of the floor plates equals 150 metres, approximately half of the skyscraper's height. One major discernible difference between the rendering and reality is the prominence of the mechanical spaces, represented by horizontal black bands in the final product. The artist's impression depicted this darker glazing pattern wrapping around the full floor plate; the completed project only obscures the length of the floor plate on each elevation, leaving the rounded corners to adopt the reflective curtain wall.
As the only building in Shenzhen's "Bonded Zone" to climb over 200 metres, the Shenzhen CFC Changfu Centre is expected to dominate the view from Hong Kong for years. But as the city explodes with skyscrapers, its supremacy may be threatened sooner than expected.
We will return next Friday with another comparison!
