Architecture & Design

Congress Center at night

The façade design should support on one hand the unique modern architecture of the building ensemble but on the other hand it should be take up typical local or traditional aspects of the region also. Zhejiang Province is known for its tea-producing region. To express the building’s regional characteristics, design of the façade is based on the superimposed configurations of the tea cultivation pathways and the planting nets. As a result, the building is enveloped by a multi-layered fabric, giving it a true architectural plasticity. Seen from a distance, the façade appears like a rigid volume, but dissolves into a network of structures and levels as you come closer.

The main idea for the design of the roof was to use it as the fifth façade of the building to set up a strong and typical local image in the shape of a lotus blossom, which you can see from all upper floors of the surrounding high-rise buildings. The façade structure would be extended unto the roof of the congress centre to cover up it partly. Through the different lengths and fixed height of the steel beams the structure is waved and form the abstract blossom of lotus in the centre of the roof. This part isn’t covered and is designed and planted as a green landscape.

Our aim is to combine and express all the regional natural features within the Centre, so that the local people will be able to identify themselves with the City of Hangzhou.