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Architects: Hans Hollein & Christoph Monschein
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:ONJ
Text description provided by the architects. A series of new photographs of Shenzhen´s SBF Tower has been unveiled by O.H.A, showing Pritzker Prize winner Hans Hollein and Christoph Monschein’s design nearing completion in the Futian district of Shenzhen. Commissioned by the duo of Southern and Bosera Funds back in 2010, the project was envisioned to contrast any high-rise in the vicinity because it is different.
With its memorable design, based on an early sketch drawn by Hans Hollein in his time in Chicago, how skyscrapers should look in the future, it becomes a dominant statement within the high-rises, in an exposed corner position of the cluster. The office tower has a strategic position within the texture of the city. Adjacent to the Town Hall and its main North-South axis, and located on East-West oriented Shen Nan Avenue, it has the pole position in the central quarter in Shenzhen, wherein midst the stock exchange building dominates.
The tower building in a plan is a simple square of 45 m x 45 m, with 42 floors and an overall height of 200 m and it features a total floor area of 80.500 m² above ground. A skirt building partially frames the tower in the base zone, where the entrance area, the public business hall and a high-class restaurant are located.
The tower building itself rises on top as a highly sculptured building with vertical gardens integrated with the architecture such giving the tower a very distinct appearance talking of alternative workstyle and sustainability. Vertically the tower is a layered structure featuring two different zones of 5 to 6 floors each which repeat alternating 3 and 4 times. One such zone has 6 identical floors with a square outer perimeter. But the other zone of 5 floors is highly complex in its outer appearance:
Each individual floor is seemingly different; deep setbacks and far outreaching cantilevers interchange along the imaginary façade line and are overgrown with plants. These sky garden-levels also have the advantage that their purposely versatile outer appearance is very flexible and can easily answer individual situations. The main entrance lies in the north with a covered drive up. The materials used are elegant surfaces of stone and wood, glass, and metals.
