Architecture studio Büro Ole Scheeren has unveiled plans for the 350-metre-high Nanjing Nexus skyscraper in China.
Named Nanjing Nexus, the supertall skyscraper was designed for a site near the Yangtze River in the financial district of the Chinese city of Nanjing.
Designed by Büro Ole Scheeren, the supertall skyscraper – a building over 300 metres – will have an octagonal shape with fluted sides.
The eight concave facades will be clad in diamond-shaped glazing broken by large openings described by the studio as “urban windows”.
These openings will contain balconies with a variety of plants and shrubbery, which the firm designed as an interpretation of the gardens and pavilions typically found in the Jiangsu province.
The curved facades and diamond-shaped glazing was designed to improve the building’s solar performance and reduce structural wind load, while also creating a shimmering effect similar to that see on the nearby Yangtze River.
Nanjing Nexus will contain 150,000 square metres of office space and a 50,000-square-metre hotel.
Located on the skyscraper’s upper floors the hotel will be topped with a “sky lobby” with a roof terrace, pool, restaurant and gardens.
“Nanjing Nexus is a building that explores the question how contemporary architecture can absorb, and in fact amplify, historical context and meaning by fusing the qualities of the past with the requirements of a future oriented workspace within the verticality of a super-tall office tower,” said Ole Scheeren.
“The convergence of past and present is not merely about formal gestures – it is about creating actual experiences and spaces with specific emotive and experiential qualities.”
Nanjing Nexus was the winning scheme in an international competition that called for a landmark for the Nanjing financial centre.
German architect Scheeren founded his firm in 2010 and has since unveiled designs for a stacked block hotel for a Chinese beach resort and also a residential skyscraper in Vancouver with a stacked form.
The renders are courtesy of Büro Ole Scheeren.
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