Evergrande Center Shenzhen

Client: Evergrande Group Co., Ltd.

Location: Shenzhen, China

Date: 2018 Competition

Area: 289,200m2

Budget: Undisclosed

AZPML

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev, Carlos Orihuela, Victoria Recio Dura

Our proposal for the Evergrande Centre in Shenzhen aims to provide an efficient supertall design with an exciting image. The form of the tower is produced by the alternative carving of the corners of a simple extrusion to produce a sinusoidal profile of the tower. The distinctive image of the tower displays a vertical wave in reference to Shenzhen’s cultural connection to water.

We started from an optimized super-high-rise floorplate of 55,50m x 55,50m with a concrete core of 27,60 x 27,60, and a line of hybrid steel/concrete column on the façade line, leaving a core to façade column-free space of 13,65m around the central core. This structure-free bay will be suitable both for open-plan offices or for a cellular office layout. The average resulting floorplate is 2,940m2, and since the area of the core per floor is 761,70m2, the efficiency of the design is over 75% net/gross in the lower levels, increasing to 85% in the upper levels, as the number of lifts decreases.

The building is designed to feature a conventional core-outrigger megaframe structural system. The section is divided on 6 sectors which are served with corresponding lift cores for Low-Rise, Mid-Rise and High-Rise levels. The sectors are divided by double height Technical/Refuge floors which accommodate outriggers and truss belts to provide structural stability against lateral forces, and feeding the mechanical services of every sector. The floorplates are proposed as steel decks spanning between the core and the façade, to provide entirely column-free floorplate spaces.

The building’s unique skin helps reduce internal heating and cooling loads through a triple-layered unitized glass panels with an electrochromic layer which allows for the façade to adapt to changing solar exposure. Photovoltaic panels will be integrated into the spandrel areas of the South, East and West facades. The exterior wall system combines maximum access to views, energy efficiency strategies and energy generation technologies. The façade is designed to appear as a monolithic glass skin with minimal joint details, which will reflect the sky and the sea at the distance, to appear like a magic waterfall.