Designed for a marine based company, the design by ACID (Advanced Construction Information Development Co., Ltd) + AaL (Advance Architecture Lab) + Studio méta- creates an iconic architectural representation of their day to day business. The architects were interested in a frozen expression of twisting water and the idea of this movement with relation to the core business of their client. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located in the central region of china, Wuhan, the 461 tower is a 15 storey office building functions as the company’s new Research and Development building. Through Research of office towers typologies, we found that it is possible to the perimeter of a quadrat fan profile as the plan of the tower; this would take advantage of the view, lighting, ventilation and layout of internal functions.
As the floor moves up vertically, the floors undergoes two simple transformations namely scaling and rotation on the centroid of the building. Using criteria base programming, the building is ensured of its minimum requirement for office width and optimum structural layout. The operations on the geometry are parametrically controlled and the design went through vigorous rounds of modification to arrive at the final geometry. This geometry also allows for a balcony zone for each office level.
The structure is being considered early in the design process and its relationship is modeled concurrently with the generation of the geometry, hence eliminated human error and speeded the entire coordination process.
Meta Design (Hong Kong) is invited as a façade design consultant; the design intension for the façade is taken to be a high priority for the expression of the building. Using prefabricated aluminum panel the designers take into consideration of various way of using density and location of holes to express a certain façade image. Ultimately the designer settled on using waves as an expression after several rounds of design to visualization tests.
Through rationalization and optimization in an early design process, the designers are able to ensure the construction only results in a 20-30% increase in cost estimation from a typical tower office. Also the optimization of the skin façade has result with 80% of similar components prefabricated with typical panels processing.
Architects: Advanced Construction Information Development Co., Ltd (ACID) + Advance Architecture Lab(AaL) + Studio méta- Location: Wuhan, China Project Members: Mu Wei, Sam Cho, Jaenes Bong(Studio méta-), Jonathon Alto（Studio méta-), Gong Rui，Nie Fei，Wang Ziyi，Wang Yujiao，Jiang Boyao Status: Un-build (Design tender) Area: 14,800 m2 Year: July 2011- June 2012
