Aedas Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

For the 18^th year, the International Architecture Awards has returned to celebrate outstanding architectural achievements globally. Based in Chicago, these awards feature exceptional new buildings, urban planning projects, and landscape architecture of 2023. Additionally, this month, the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) is currently taking place in the city. Both the awards and the Biennial attempt to shed light on each country’s architectural, design, cultural, and social trends.

Since the inception of the International Architecture Awards in 2005, this annual program has served as a platform for celebrating contemporary architecture. Moreover, the awards institution believes in architecture’s potential to enhance the quality of life for individuals globally. This year, the selected winners span 48 countries, from Ethiopia to Tokyo and New York to Nova Scotia.

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Aedas Global, in collaboration with GDAD, revealed the design of a 230 meters tall mixed-use complex comprising of two twin towers and a plaza. The development, located at the base of the Baiyun Mountain range in Guangzhou, China, contains industrial, commercial, and publicly available areas while also including large urban green spaces and panoramic views of the mountains. The massing of the project is inspired and informed by the local topography, with sight-seeing corridors opening up toward the surrounding scenery.

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This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by established firms. From a museum dedicated to Jewish history to a high-speed railway hub and a university student center, the following selection showcases a variety of concepts, design approaches, and programs developed by global architecture offices.

Featuring firms like KPF, Aedas, Fala Atelier, ADP Architecten, and Peter Pichler Architects, this week's selection of unbuilt projects explore architectural and urban interventions at different scales and at varying stages of their development. Whether conceptual works or ongoing, planned for execution, and even under construction, each project aims to offer an appropriate response to the spatial, functional, social, and environmental needs of its context.

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Aedas has unveiled the design of the Hangzhou Yun He Wan International Tourism and Leisure Complex in Hangzhou, China. Located in the southern area of the Grand Canal New Town in the Gongshu District of Hangzhou, the site is the first phase of a larger project, starting off as a vibrant international tourism and leisure complex that highlights the waterfront of Yun He Wan and the historical remains of the nearby industrial pier.

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Aedas has won an international competition to design Shenzhen's new Qingshuihe Comprehensive Transportation Hub in a joint venture with China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group Co., LTD and Shenzhen Urban Transport Planning Center Co., LTD. The master plan draws inspiration from the natural environment of the area, integrating nature and water elements into the high-density city to build a unique new emblem for Qingshuihe. The underground compact hub releases large above-ground spaces which will feature urban terraces, offices, five-star hotels, first-rate apartments, science and technology exhibition halls, and other facilities.

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This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by established firms. From river-side commercial centers to mixed-use towers, this article explores commercial and residential functions designed by global architecture offices that are either conceptual, have won first-prize in design competitions, or are currently being realized.

Featuring a pedestrian bridge by Grimshaw Architects in France, and a finance-district skyscraper dubbed as the "Lighthouse of the 21^st Century" by Ronald Lu & Partners, this roundup explores how established architecture firms have designed buildings that cater to the spatial and environmental needs of their users and respective functions. This round up also includes designs from SOM, IMPLMNT, Gensler, and Aedas, among other notable architects.

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Aedas has revealed its design for Shirble — The Prime, a new mixed-use development that would revitalize the Ba Gua Ling industrial zone, a central area of Shenzhen. The design features a retail podium from which one office tower and three residential ones of various heights rise, connected by a sky-park at 150 metres above the ground. The high-density development aims to respond to the city’s demand for housing while bringing multiple aspects of urban life into one building.

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Aedas has unveiled the design for a tourist leisure resort that takes the form of an organically-spaced 266-meter tower in the harbour city of Zhanjiang. Located at the intersection of three distinct urban areas, the Zhanjiang Yun Hai No. 1 Tower becomes a portal for the city and a symbol of its development. With a tower design inspired by the motion of koi fish, and a podium echoing the shape of waves, the project creates an allegory of Zhanjiang’s harbour culture.

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Aedas, one of the world’s leading architecture and design practices, designed the 323 meter Changsha Jinmao Tower. Located in the newly planned Changsha CBD, the architecture firm created a high-rise that reflects its context, especially the local steep mountainous landscape.

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The Chongqing Gaoke Group Ltd Office building designed by Aedas has reached new heights as construction progresses, and the project is taking form in the urban fabric and the city center’s skyline. Standing tall at the north of Xingfu Plaza, in Jiangbei District of Chongqing, in the southwest of China, the high rise introduces a vibrant and dynamic movement in the surrounding.

For most of the history of architecture, interesting facades were achieved through materiality or ornamentation. From the elaborately painted friezes of the Parthenon to the glass exteriors of modern skyscrapers, architecture was primarily static, only ‘changing’ as the environment would change and affect the material of the façade in differing ways, be it rain, light, rust, etc.

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Videos

In their collateral event for the debut of the Moscow pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the exhibition "Moskva: urban space" explores the historic development of public spaces and examines the city’s progress in the context of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s winning proposal for Zaryadye Park. Curated by Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow together with Kristin Kristin Feireiss from AEDES, and organized by MCA - Moscow Committee of Architecture and Urban Development, the exhibition comes at a pivotal moment in determining the future of urban development in Moscow. As Kuznetsov states, "While the face of Moscow in the past 100 years was largely determined by the architecture of its buildings, representing political and economic developments, today’s urban singularity is based on the “connective fabric” of its public spaces that have become equally important identity-makers and contributes significantly to improving the quality of urban life for its citizens." To see photos of the exhibition by Patricia Parinejad and learn more about the story behind it, continue reading after the break.

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As of this week Aedas, which was recently ranked as the 5th largest and influential practice in the UK by the Architects' Journal, has demerged into two separate practices. The thirteen offices in China, South-East Asia, the Middle East and the US, will continue to operate under the Aedas brand whilst the eight UK offices and the offices in Russia, Poland and Kazakhstan will operate under a new name: AHR. According to the outgoing board, the demerger "will allow both companies to focus on their respective strengths and will enable them to grow the businesses in different directions." The intention is that both groups will continue to work together on projects in the future.