Financial City Community Center locates in the central section next to Suzhou Canal. Architects explore inherent logic of local cultural form and language, stimulating the vitality of surrounding open space and make it the city parlor for residents.
Suzhou is widely known as the “garden city” and Taihu stone is an essential element of the garden, representing an important cultural carrier much loved by citizens. The project attempts to establish the connection between Taihu stone and front structure. Based on this, a modern architecture with metaphorical meaning of Taihu stone is created in a twisted, bevel and split form.
The main space is a flowing space with column-free steel structure, and the roof is presented in a twisted form. Sunlight streams through the sides, and outdoor large steps lead to indoor space. To bring simplicity to the space, architects combine steel structure and curtain wall. Besides, more upright columns are used without beam columns to form an orderly space structure.
A third interface is added beyond the structure and glass curtain wall so that viewers can’t see through internal space, which blurs the distinction between internal and external spaces. The outer skin system, glass curtain wall system and column system are separated in proper order, and they look somewhat different, but get overlapped visually. Such ambiguity results in a reserved yet passionate experience. As to the second-layer facade design, architects uses parameterized skin texture and creates a poetic picture of Suzhou by lines.
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Last year more than 40 countries took part in the WAN Awards with strong showings from Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. And we saw some truly outstanding projects, take a look at the winners from last year here.