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Selected from a field of 27 entries, MVRDV has won a design competition for the mixed-use Shimao ShenKong International Centre in Shenzhen. MVRDV's Shenzhen Terraces concept puts sustainability front and centre, incorporating a number of planting and water features to reduce the local temperature and provide urban wildlife with additional habitat.
The project is conceived as a three-dimensional urban living room filled with over 20 programs, including a library, gallery and outdoor theatre. Located in Universiade New Town, Longgang District, Shenzhen Terraces aims to integrate landscape, leisure, commerce and culture. Surrounded by highrises, commercial complexes, sports and educational facilities, the project is ideally situated to become a signature public place in the neighbourhood.
Punctuated by amorphous pods of vegetation, the project's plinth gives rise to stacked plateaus that form the site's buildings. "The predominantly horizontal lines of the terraces contrast with the vertical lines of the surrounding high-rises to bring about a sense of tranquillity through their slow curving shapes," says MVRDV.
The concrete used to construct the buildings will be manufactured using recycled concrete as the aggregate, with photovoltaic panels gracing portions of the rooftops. Several design elements also assist in enhancing the development's green credentials. Large overhangs shelter users from the sun, creating comfortable sitting areas and places for plants and water basins to cool the verandas. Terrace edges sink at strategic points to link various floors while also serving as outdoor auditoriums. At other points in the site, the facades are pushed inwards to mark entrances.
The largest building in the project will contain a bus terminal, conference centre and entrepreneurship centre. Carved out in its centre, the building will host a giant open-air atrium.
"Shenzhen has developed so quickly since its origins in the 1970s," says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas. "In cities like this, it is essential to carefully consider how public spaces and natural landscape can be integrated into the densifying cityscape. The urban living room of the Shimao ShenKong International Centre will be a wonderful example of this, and could become a model for the creation of key public spaces in New Town developments throughout Shenzhen. It aims to make an area that you want be outside, hang out and meet, even when it is hot—a literally cool space for the university district, where all communication space can be outside. It will truly be a public building."
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