Dayuan International Center

The ensemble brings housing, offices and shops together on a site in a high-tech development zone south of the city centre. The design team won a limited competition for it and was commissioned with both design and construction.

The city is known for its green character and for a culture of public life lived outdoors. The aim was to carry that quality into a dense new district, through a varied sequence of spaces and buildings at a human scale, with attractive public spaces inside and out that give the place its own identity.

The complex lies along a main traffic artery and mixes buildings of very different sizes. Square freestanding blocks of up to four storeys alternate with towers, so that despite the high density a network of varied outdoor spaces opens up. On the eastern part of the site, two offset office towers frame a welcoming plaza and give the district its address on the avenue. The quieter side, away from the road, holds three slender apartment towers, and three square low buildings between them house shops and restaurants for office workers and residents alike.

The landscape received particular care. Gardens with different themes, planted with bamboo, turf or water features and set at different levels into the ground, form a relief of gardens and squares. A separate system of roads and paths keeps the district comfortable on foot.

The office towers have double facades with natural back-ventilation, giving better protection from climate and traffic noise while ventilating the offices through the gap between the layers. Though housing and offices use different facade types, a shared structure and material palette binds the two groups of towers into one, and rounded building edges bring more light to the east and west faces of the south-facing towers. That underlying clarity allows each building to vary while the whole remains coherent.