Jaeger Kahlen Partner is one of the joint winners of the competition to design the Bao’An Industrial Investment Tower in Shenzhen. The central location has led to great demand for new office spaces; however, proximity to the airport meant a height restriction of 150 m. As a response to this constraint, the design of the monolithic building divides the structure into stacked cubes whose dramatic shifts integrates the tower into the scale of its urban surroundings.
These juts and recesses in the terraced, stacked volumes create self-contained city districts in themselves. Spiral stairways form vertically connected work environments, while the stairwells, conceived as atria, link the building’s levels. Moreover, the podium on the south side forms a public plaza.
A closed cavity façade − a special version of a double façade with a closed-off buffer zone between its two shells − has been used here. The space between the two layers offers the possibility for sunshade elements. It also acts as an acoustic separation between the office spaces and the bustling city streets.
