The Urban Retreat
This biophilic urban retreat is the heart of a new urban office and community development in Shenzhen's Qianhai district. A KPF and ASPECT Studios collaboration, the Hony Capital Tower development offers a unique mix of urban life, combining Hony's new corporate headquarters with an urban park and community space.
The landscape design aims to create a new landmark office landscape and residential community in Qianhai. It provides a garden-like ecological environment for the office workers, residents and public to retreat, relax and interact with each other away from the busy and intense urban surroundings. An overall goal for the design team was the creation of an environment for lifestyle and the Hony brand by defining a calming and elegant landscape, bursting with fine-grain details, materiality and textures.
Read more +
- CLIENT Hony Capital
- LOCATION Shenzhen, China
- Year 2015-2021
The landscape was conceived as the foundation of the Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates-designed Hony Tower. Where the tower meets the ground, it passes the baton to the landscape, converting the scale of the built experience into a more human one. The landscape protects its occupants from the hustle and bustle of the streets by creating a secluded retreat, utilising new planting to create a green threshold defined by detailed active edges, populated with meticulously crafted stone sofas.
Shenzhen is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with very little quality outdoor space open to the public in a bustling metropolis of 17.56 million people. The project aims to create a vibrant biophilic urban oasis in the heart of a densely populated new development district, a place for people where residents, office workers, young families and the wider public have the opportunity to escape from the stress of urban life in a quiet, open space immersed by thriving green plants and tree shaded cool stone sofas.
The development of an active edge boundary which optimized the depth and loading constrains of the podium and create places for people to come gather and connect. Bespoke stone sofas are set into the elevation of the edge thresholds. Each are hand-crafted by local stonemasons from solid granite. The light tonal qualities reflect the solar radiation and the thermal mass of the stone results in a cooling effect.
- TEAM ASPECT Studios, KPF
- PHOTOGRAPHY Wenjie Wang
