Büro Ole Scheeren has won the international competition for the design of Tencent’s new global headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The new structure, occupying a 14-hectare site, will become part of a new urban development along Qianhai Bay. Envisioned as a centerpiece within the future technology and financial district, Büro Ole Scheeren’s Tencent Helix will become the center of the multinational company’s expanding ecosystem.
The scheme is integrated within the master plan for the new neighborhood on Dachanwan island, understood as the ‘final piece of Shenzhen’s urban puzzle.’ The swirling shape of the Tencent Helix is meant to represent the company’s meteoric growth. The building’s dynamic spiraling movement is anchored at its core with the Vortex Incubator, a flexible gathering place that connects the four office towers. Surrounding the dynamic structure, a network of pedestrian pathways connects the headquarters to their urban context.
At the center of the development, the Votex Incubator is designed to act as an interface for all staff to meet and interact. Hosting Tencent’s academy, ample recreational spaces, a health club, a conference center, and collaborative offices, this area also extends downwards to link the grand lobby, allowing the public to interact and engage with the organization. This permeable urban base, named the Urban Forum, features a mix of restaurants, retail spaces, and public amenities to better integrate the structure within the city fabric.
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"Form Follows Fiction": An Interview with Ole ScheerenModular prismatic panels cover the façade while allowing daylight to enter the buildings and providing views of the city and bay area. Nature is brought inside the complex through a system of spiraling landscape terraces that extend from the Vortex to create functional outdoor spaces. The shape of the four office towers is also adapted to allow for maximum natural daylight and ventilation across all office floors, thus prioritizing passive design principles. The garden ecosystem also dissipates the heat from the headquarters and allows for water retention following the sponge city concept.
Tencent has a vision for the role of technology as a multi-dimensional system of sustainable values for society. Our design for the new headquarters reflects the same values, converging technology with the needs of people and society in a multi-dimensional construct of space and social integration. - Ole Scheeren
In a recent interview for Archaily, Ole Scheeren discusses the importance of the narrative of a project and the quality architecture has by building the stages where people live, or "the fictional anticipation of life". His office has also been named the winner of another competition for the design of a winemaking campus and tourist complex in Yibin, China, as well as the competition for the commission of a 350-meter tall skyscraper for the Nanjing Jiangbei New Financial Center, also in China.
