Text description provided by the architects. In Shanghai, China, Cadillac China and Gensler’s Shanghai Office sound a clear note of great latitude in expressing Cadillac House’s individuality, thus to give it the leeway to embrace deconstructivism and digital technologies.
Cadillac has a longstanding history now and Cadillac House is at its tender age, which is born in the ‘Me’ Generation wherein its birth is intended for exploring the stronger relation between new-technology trends and aestheticism and Self-expressing.
Nestled on a small peninsula with a lovely pool encompassing around, the House could be perceived as a vehicle-like gemstone mined out of a lake. Installed in 7,000 rectangular stainless steel plates, the façade unveils its true charm as dusk falls — ribbons of LED underneath the metallic husk twinkle bright and Cadillac, the sign, emits beautiful light — and it dawns on you ‘what a glittering site!’.
The House is equipped with durable solar panels, with the sustainable conversion from sunlight to electricity. There could not be mere one single merit that natural light could engender. The House features skylights purposefully for the use of optimizing light penetration into the inside. Inside, the consistency of refinement and luxury will hardly astound you to see the discontinuity of air of nobleness. Moving through a wondrous entrance, you will be greeted with an open-plan foyer emerging before you.
Awaiting are the Cadillacs. They are waiting for customers who take an avid interest in carrying a sign of a luxury home. Gensler realizes the idea of establishing a platform for Cadillacs to showcase their specialties, and, underneath a massive spiral staircase or in the center of a lobby will you set your eyes on a different individual. Standing still for a moment with eyes riveted on the Cadillacs, you will smell of the classic aroma of dark roast coffee, which is tantalizing in the space, and that aroma is a high-profile fixture in a luxurious locality.
A timber-and-concrete spiral staircase leads from the open-plan foyer to the second level and the third, dispensing with columns offering the verticality to offset the smoothness of the ribbon-like spiral. Three floors in total, Cadillac House rings the change with a linear arrangement of ‘past-present-future, having a theme fixed on every floor but in a way that the ‘future’ is in the middle and the ‘past’ in the top floor.
Level 2 focuses on the theoretical possibility of multi-sensory interactive technologies. Adopting multiple ways to open up a novel opportunity for customers to a body-syntonic end, is actually, grounded on the basis of VR and 3D printing.
Technologies are an invariably trend-propelled force. There is a patch of the area which is characterized by a cluster of slender cuboids with digital screens embedded, is named ‘Digital Forest’. The name could be conceived as a variation of ‘Concrete Jungle’ because these columns have a bearing on their architectural counterparts. A hallway is imbued with a notion of the time tunnel, through which you are capable of having a panoramic view of the growth of Cadillac.
