A vast program is packed onto the Vanke Center’s reclaimed lake front site through two basic gestures. First, most of the compartmentalized programs, including apartments, hotel and the head offices of Vanke, are grouped together in a linear bar building, almost as long as New York’s Empire State building is tall.
Rather than collect the program in a series of individual object buildings each dedicated to a unique function, the elements are assembled into a singular, space-defining, elevated mega-structure.
Steven Holl’s nearly completed Vanke Center, in Shenzen, China is also lifted up off of its site, but unlike its modern progenitors this lift allows the project to marry the two halves of what had previously been a dichotomy of purpose.
The lift constructs a more active relationship to site, while reinvigorating the bar building as an archetypal residential typology. The project points to a future paradigm where internally derived, conceptually pure prototypes are subtly coopted to create new forms of contextuality.
The building’s environmental responsiveness points towards a new approach to site that is broader than a conventional notion of contextualism predicated on similar form, alignments, materiality and details. The Vanke Center suggests a strategy in which idealized formal prototypes be they existing infrastructural elements, peripheral buildings, broader site factors such as views and circulation, and environmental conditions such as air circulation and water control.
Derived from autonomous formal prototypes, these contemporary architectures, through their adaptability, can allow a new contextuality to emerge.
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