In Guangzhou Swire Properties have recently completed a mixed used commercial development taking up a full city block on comprising hotels, offices and shopping including a cultural centre for the city. TaiKoo Hui is a large-scale multi-faceted complex in the thriving heart of the Tianhe Central Business District of Guangzhou, developed and managed by Swire Properties. Offering a gross floor area of approximately 358,000 sqm (exclusive of the cultural center), it incorporates a prime shopping mall, two Grade A office towers, a cultural center, the first Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Guangzhou, and serviced apartments. More info at taikoohui.com
Daylight is a key ingredient to the Taikoo Hui shopping centre, and notably with the intent to flood the mall with light deep into the lower and basement levels. The glass components designed by Hugh Dutton Associates celebrate daylight. They provide sculptural expression that responds to light through filtering it, diffusing it, playing with it’s shadows, reflecting it.
Hugh Dutton Associates were engaged by Swire as specialist design consultants to architects Arquitectonica for all the feature glazing components of the development; notably the main entrance atria boxes, and waving linear skylight down the central spine of the shopping mall.
Other fragments, such as the cultural centre lobby, glass footbridges, office building and hotel lobbies and canopies, glass flooring and glass canopies, are carried out in a similar design approach based on simple geometric compositions that play with light. Waffle grids in the case of the entrance box atria and a curvilinear series of glass facets for the main skylight. For both, the simple surfaces are reinforced with tensile bracing systems that complement the design composition with points of interest or spatial geometric compositions. Careful attention is paid to the design of the assembly details and structural components.
The glass box atria are waffle grids in welded steel plate ant then clad in aluminium casings to conceal the connection details and glazing joints. The long spans are assisted with the cable and inverted pyramid struts that culminate in a custom feature steel casting. A notable feature of the glass boxes are the glass to glass corners the play a key role in the feeling of transparency and lightness. The boxes are more waffle surfaces that play with light than they are devices for spatial containement.
The skylight roof comprises a series of facets of planar glass that describe an undulating surface from one end of the mall to the other. The undulations peak over the escalator exits to provide access onto the level 3 landscaped deck. The cable system assists the cross beams to span across the void of the mall but also protection against uplift forces in typhoon conditions.
In all cases the glass is fritted and treated to limit excessive glare. Black dots are printed on the glass surface to attenuate the glare, whilst still letting light flood into the space below.
Inside the mall, glass footbridges reinforce the use of glass as an expression of the light penetration into the mall. Conceived as the thinnest translucent wafers possible, 450mm deep for 16m approx. spans, they are supported by a tight array of heavy steel beams clad in translucent opal interlayer glass. To achieve the thin design, damping devices are provided for to limit the discomfort of the pedestrian traffic.
In Guangzhou Swire Properties have recently completed a mixed used commercial development taking up a full city block on comprising hotels, offices and shopping including a cultural centre for the city. TaiKoo Hui is a large-scale multi-faceted complex in the thriving heart of the Tianhe Central Business District of Guangzhou, developed and managed by Swire Properties. Offering a gross floor area of approximately 358,000 sqm (exclusive of the cultural center), it incorporates a prime shopping mall, two Grade A office towers, a cultural center, the first Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Guangzhou, and serviced apartments. More info at taikoohui.com