Aoti Vanke Centre

Located at the heart of Hangzhou’s Qianjiang Century City central business district, Aoti Vanke Centre embraces the hybrid mode as the way forward and challenges conventional workspaces by externalising human activities to a fluid and highly permeable field of semi-outdoor space.

The project is made up of two office towers and a podium, perceived as the gateway of the emerging Asian Games Village of Hangzhou. Being an innovative working hub in Hangzhou, this sleek new office complex reinterprets the podium-tower typology with each level of its elevated podium rotated by a different degree to create myriad walk spaces for people’s enjoyment.

A SMART BUSINESS AND LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY

The taller Tower 1 houses corporate tenants, while the shorter Tower 2 features co-working space for start-ups and micro-entrepreneurs. The towers are rotated to optimise natural sunlight and views to the new commercial core by the Qiantang River.

The ring-shaped podium is lifted off the ground to create a central courtyard, while the semi-public podium roof garden serves as a bridge between the two towers, promoting symbiosis and creating networking occasions for building users. It also allows the passing through of a double-height covered outdoor space, as well as providing a north-south shortcut across the longitudinal site. This operative subdivision of the lot brings down the development to a human scale, experienced and enjoyed by the building users and pedestrians at large.

ADAPTING THE PANDEMIC SITUATION

The future of work is constantly being reimagined. At a time when COVID-19 has accelerated shifting trends in sustainable design and spatial relations, the programmatic stack blurs the work-life distinction and lends itself towards a smarter urban lifestyle for the next generation, promoting interactions, active engagement and sustainability.

The project is an opportunity to rethink the ways people collaborate with one another and connect with the workspace. The pandemic has highlighted the impact the physical environment has on human’s wellbeing and productivity. Thus, the design of Aoti Vanke Centre provides space for people to take stock and discover what works best for them.

HEART OF NATURE

The project disrupts the established norm in office architecture that the prime central spot should be occupied by tower lobbies. Instead, at Aoti, the lobbies take a step back from the forefront and the central courtyard doubles as an entry point at the heart of the site, opening up more space to integrate and engage with the urban fabric.

At street level, the richly landscaped pedestrian zone is lined with two stories of retail, F&Bs and galleries, stretching lengthily along the main road with maximised shop frontage. It funnels the walk flow into the courtyard, where a public forum provides a relaxed communal environment for casual exchanges.

PROJECT DATA
Project Name: Aoti Vanke Centre
Location: Hangzhou, China
Completion Date: 2020
Site Area: 13,969 square metres
Gross Floor Area: 95,521 square metres
Client: Huayun Xinde Real Estate Co., Ltd
Architecture Firm: LWK + PARTNERS
Principal Architect: Ferdinand Cheung
Images: LWK + PARTNERS