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Architects: AECOM
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:Sergio Marquez
Text description provided by the architects. The Vanke Sales house design took on an interdisciplinary approach between AECOM San Francisco landscape team and AECOM Shanghai Architecture and Urbanism team with a set goal to produce architecture and landscape that was in dialogue with one another. Both the landscape and building both have permanent and temporary functions as the sales house will be transformed into a club house upon completion of planned residential buildings and part of the landscape will be erased to build those residential buildings.
The Landscape strategy involved a field of mounds at the entrance to the sales house each with different heights, plantings, and spaces formed by spiral trails that take you up their tops and back down again. This solution was the result of the excavation taking place on site that resulted in excess dirt. A cut and fill approach was used and the dirt removed for underground parking was used to make the mounds in the landscape. The proposal for the sales house was to also use the spiral as both a formal gesture and a circulation strategy that created an expression and experience that was not very different from that found in the landscape.
In the case of the sales house the program required linear movement from one end of the building to the other as a device to move people through. In order to mitigate this requirement and blend the building into the circular field of the landscape the bar of program was rolled into a circle and then lifted on one end to create and infinite circulation loop in the program. In terms of circulation this meant that visitors could come in through the lobby circle through display area and main space then exit to the roof. At the roof they can climb to the top along the inside of the spiral which frames views the ocean beyond. While descending along the outside and back into the lobby, the roof frames views of the planned construction site. This space will provide a roof garden space for the coming community after its transformation into a club house.
