Atelier Z+

The Qianxi Business Centre is located in the new town area of Qingpu. The site is quite tight and small, occupying a prominent position with a main road to the south, a 35KV power substation to the north, and compressed for an open space facing a river to the west. Meanwhile, the leftover of the site needs to contain a program both as a business centre and a community centre. What we try to do is to impose a dynamic but easily identifiable symbol in this complex yet undistinguished context. This symbol is created with a differentiation of the business and community centres both in materials and tectonics. On the other hand, the pertinence of their forms, colours and scales combines the two centres with the urban infrastructure (the power substation) into a coherent whole.

The building layout follows the turning street that shapes the site with an 8-story business building on the south and a 3-story community centre on the north, connected by a public lobby with 3-stories. This lobby opens to the east and west, and is an interior public urban space. The turn-back ramps in the middle of the community centre connect the gallery, auditorium and activity rooms together on different levels. The roof of the community centre is connected to the roof of the power substation across a service passageway. This roof platform landscaped with wood pavement and arbour planting, and serves as a public garden. The main business building is a polished black exposed concrete box. The design of the openings relies on the nuanced composition of fixed glass windows and operable wooden windows for air ventilation. The east and west façade of the Community centre are made of transparent curtain walls with black mullions, which present the conformity of urban spatial transparency and community functions.

Project Name: Xiayang Millennium Business Centre, Qingpu, Shanghai

Location: Qingpu, Shanghai

Client: Shanghai Cheer-day Real Estate Co., Ltd.

Architects: Zhang Bin, Zhou Wei

Project Team: Lu Jun, Zhang Huiying

Structure: reinforced concrete frame; Basement, 8 Stories and a Penthouse

Principal Use: office, commerce, community centre

Material: polished black exposed concrete, aluminium, cast- aluminium shutter, glass, timber

Building Area: 1,448 sqm

Gross Floor Area: 9,982 sqm

Cost: RMB 40,000,000

Design Period: 2006.03 -

Construction Period: 2007 -