IAPA shared with us their proposal for the Guangzhou Daily Group of Culture Center, a large multi-purpose building complex, which recently won the excellence award in the International Architecture Design Competition. The center, which includes office, exhibition, commercial, hotel, culture, and service space, creates a building complex with a vivid image, unique content and regional cultural features. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located in the Guangzhou Pazhou Headquarters Commerce and Trade Zone and east of the south section of Guangzhou’s new central axis, the center lies against the Pearl River on the north and faces the Canton Tower to the west to enjoy superior location.
Paper and printing are the two of the most representative elements in newspaper culture, which are the entry points in this design.The folding paper is the original design inspiration. In order to show that the Culture Center is not only a carrier of the space, but also a carrier of the information, while the newspaper is an important channel of information dissemination in the information age. The form of the Culture Center looks like thousands paper folding together. It is a representative symbol of the newspaper culture.
IAPA extended the folding paper idea from architecture to landscape. The exterior landscape spaces use abundant water and subsidence-type landscape garden, so that try to emphasize the regional features of the southern China water city and the characteristic of local waterfront architecture. The different height garden is not only blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape, but also strengthen the building volume and the full integration and extension with the surrounding landscape and water features.
The museum of the Culture Center, IAPA treated it as a moveable- type printing board which is one of China ancient great inventions . The rich type matrix is not only make the newspaper museum has varied shape and strong thematic indoor and outdoor displaying space, also express the deep historical origins between the movable type printing and the culture of the contemporary newspaper.
In order to create the effect of paper folding, except for taking the form of slabs overhanging, they put in the external hanging metal sunshade devices to emphasize the horizontal line structure of the whole building. This approach effectively controls the light transmittance level of the building. It is also very suitable for the regional climate characteristic of Guangzhou. The density of the sunshade devices and the size of the glass area are determined by the building internal function. About the device size which takes full consideration of the human body scale and the sight accessibility etc., people can enjoy the charming scenery of the Pearl River no matter standing besides the window or sitting in the office.
Architects: IAPA Location: Guangzhou, China Client: Guangzhou Daily Group Area: 180,000 sqm
