Bellevue’s MulvannyG2 wins international mixed-use design competition in China

Published 3:31 pm Monday, August 16, 2010

Bellevue’s MulvannyG2 Architecture has won an international design competition for the design of a mixed-use commercial development in the heart the central business district of Chengdu, China. The development will be one of the largest of its kind in Chengdu, an inland city located in the Sichuan province.

Suning Real Estate Development Co. of Nanjing orchestrated the competition. The 175,000 square-meter development will include a 45-story tower comprised of a 5-star hotel and corporate offices, set upon a 12-story podium, which will include luxury hotel amenities as well as world-class and local, boutique-scaled retail.

“The development’s design successfully considers desirable retail planning and leasing strategies, hotel entry and egress, energy efficiency, and the economic, historic, and cultural significance of the site,” said Ming Zhang, President of MulvannyG2 and the project’s Senior Design Principal.

Suning Real Estate awarded the opportunity to MulvannyG2 because of the firm’s design, planning and programming strategies for the economic and cultural success of the development.

Designers placed the hotel’s lobby and other hotel amenities at the development’s 9th floor rather than at street level. This allows larger column-free spaces for hotel ballrooms and meeting spaces while reserving the space of the highest commercial value, the street level, for high-end retail.

Garden terraces located at different heights of the retail podium provide varying experiences, some quiet, some punctuated by the din of the streets below. And sightlines within the 10-story retail podium allow shoppers to anticipate stores and experiences many floors up or down, across the space’s atrium.

Floors two through eight of the podium will feature specialty stores, restaurants, a cinema, and an ice skating rink, all vertically connected via a central atrium that fills the space with natural light.

The 45-story tower at the center of the development is created from three overlapping and curved curtain walls. Three building facades allow two-thirds of the tower’s offices and rooms to receive some degree of southern exposure in Chengdu’s generally temperate and overcast climate. A more typical, four-sided tower would have provided southern exposure to only 50 percent, or two, of the tower’s sides.

The Podium incorporates green roofs and gardens as the podium’s profile ascends. These outdoor spaces include terraces for dining and outdoor spaces for shoppers. Green roofs also offer the sustainable benefit of absorbing stormwater runoff.