HANKING CENTER BY MORPHOSIS

Hanking group headouarter—— Hanking Center, will be a new landmark by Shennan Road at a height of nearly 80 storey. The project is located in Nanshan Hi-tech Zone, adjacent to north of Shennan Road, covering a land area of 11,017m2 , with a plot ratio of 10, and a building coverage of 60%.

The land is for office and commerce use including an office area of 100,170 m2 and commercial area of 10,000 m2, the service life of which will be 50 years, the building height will be 320 meters, and the net ceiling height will be more than 3m. “Hanking Center” not only enjoys the natural height and unparallel location, but also owns salable grade a landmark offices which are in shortage in this area.

Hanking Group will break through the traditional office design to reflect spirit of the city through creative design, and build a Hanking business benchmark which is excellent both internally and externally and is of world-class standard. "Hanking Center" organized the international architecture design competition in 2012, and invited the world-renowned international master to design the project, and finally selected the design by Morphosis Architects, whose main designer is Tom Meien, the winner of the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

The whole building of Hanking Center designed by Tom Meien is with strong sense of sculpture, and bold, innovative, international way of features, which totally reflects the international style of its master. As a creative landmark on the future Shenzhen Road , it owns a very high degree of recognition and publicity.

The jury is made up of 5 experts and 2 client representatives. The chairman of the jury is Hong Kong well-known architect Rocco Yim, while the other 5 jury experts are well-known architects of home and abroad—Feng Yueqiang, Ole Scheeren, Zhong Bing and Zeng Qun.

The top 3 scheme winners are as follows:

1^st Prize Winner:

Morphosis Architects

+ IBE Consulting Engineers

+ JOHN A. MARTIN& ASSOCIATES, INC.

Joint Group

2^nd Prize Winner:

Urbanus

+TECO Sustainable Architecture and Engineering LLC

Joint Group

3^rd Prize Winner:

Gensler Architectural Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd

+上海建筑设计研究院有限公司

Joint Group

Year: 2013

Rendering: luxigon

OPEN EMERSON COLLEGE LOS ANGELES BY MORPHOSIS ARCHITECTS

Morphosis has completed a new Hollywood campus for arts school Emerson College in Los Angeles and Saturday, March 8 will celebrate the grand opening.

Located in the heart of Hollywood, the new facility establishes a permanent home on Sunset Boulevard for EmersonCollege’s existing undergraduate internship program that will extend the ELA experience to students studying in any of the seven disciplines that are offered through the School of Communication and the School of the Arts.

The new facility will also host workshops, lectures, and other events to engage with alumni and the LA community. Bringing student housing, instructional facilities, and administrative offices to one location, ELA condenses the diversity of a college campus into an urban site. Housing up to 217 students, the domestic zones frame a dynamic core dedicated to creativity, learning, and social interaction.

Composed of two slender residential towers bridged by a multi-use platform, the 10-story square frame encloses a central open volume to create a flexible outdoor “room.” A sculpted form housing classrooms and administrative offices weaves through the void, defining multi-level terraces and active interstitial spaces that foster informal social activity and creative cross-pollination.

Looking out onto the multi-level terrace, exterior corridors to student suites and common rooms are shaded by an undulating, textured metal scrim spanning the full height of the towers’ interior face. Looking to the local context, the center finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular facades house flexible, fantastical spaces within.

With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the framework, the upper platform serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances, transforming the undulating scrim into a dynamic visual backdrop.

The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery. Anticipated to achieve a LEED Gold rating, the new center champions Emerson’s commitment to both sustainable design and community responsibility.

Defining the building’s facades to the East and West, the residential towers feature an active exterior skin. Responding to local weather conditions, the automated sunshade system opens and closes horizontal fins outside the high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimize heat gain while maximizing daylight and views.

Further green initiatives include the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials, installation of efficient fixtures to reduce water use by 40%, energy savings in heating and cooling through a passive valence system, developed by Buro Happold, and a building management and commissioning infrastructure to monitor and optimize efficiency of all systems.

Additional green design initiatives include: the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials; installation of efficient water-saving fixtures; a high-performance glass curtainwall to minimize heat gain; landscaping and a living green wall; and a central management infrastructure to monitor overall building efficiency.

Location: Los Angeles, USA 
Architects: Morphosis 
Design Director: Thom Mayne 
Principal & Project Manager: Kim Groves 
Project Architect: Aaron Ragan 
Lead Project Designer: Chandler Ahrens 
Project Designer: Shanna Yates 
Project Team: Natalia Traverso Caruana, Brock Hinze, Yasushi Ishida, Jai Kumaran 
Project Assistant: Katsuya Arai, Marco Becucci, Chris Bennett, Cory Brugger, Amaranta Campos, Joe Filippelli, Alex Fritz, Penny Herscovitch, Hunter Knight, Zach Main, Jon McAllister, Nicole Meyer, Cameron Northrop, Brandon Sampson, Scott Smith, Michael Smith, Satoru Sugihara, Ben Toam, Elizabeth Wendell 
Development Consultant: Robert Silverman 
Structural Engineer: John A. Martin Associates, Inc. 
MEP Engineer: Buro Happold 
Civil Engineer: KPFF 
Landscape Consultant: Katherine Spitz Associates 
Information Technology & BIM Implementation: Synthesis 
Lighting Consultant: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, Inc. 
Theater Consultant: Auerbach Pollock Friedlander 
Acoustic Consultant: Newson Brown Associates LLC 
Facade Consultant: A. Zahner Architectural Metals, JA Weir Associates 
LEED Consultant: Davis Langdon 
Geotechnical Consultant: Geotechnologies Inc. 
Sustainability: Davis Langdon 
General Contractor: Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company 
Exterior Building Maintenance: Olympique 
Site Area: 0.8 acres / 0.3 hectares 
Size: 120,000 gross sq ft / 11,148 gross sq m 
Year: 2014 
Client: Emerson College 
Photo: Iwan Baan, Roland Halbe

PUDONG WATERFRONT BY SWA GROUP + MORPHOSIS

The SWA Group, with Morphosis that developed the site’s architecture, has won an international design competition for a 2.3-kilometer-long new park along the Pudong waterfront near Shanghai’s International Expo Centre.

 

The transformation of this prominent waterfront site, at the southern head of the city, includes a 940-acre mixed-use development and a 250-acre park along the Huangpu River.

The winning design called ‘Front City, Five Parks’ by SWA and Morphosis, “builds on the role of Shanghai as a place where tradition and modernity meld to form a unique cosmopolitan identity” said Ying-Yu Hung, SWA Managing Principal in Los Angeles, with the idea of creating a new gate of the global city.

The project includes five 5 distinctive parks:

• International Front - a formal park with large plazas and landmarks;
• Eco Front - a sprawling park with informational/educational experiences;
• Civic Front - axial corridors with a performing cultural center;  
• Community Front - a large green space with sports facilities and recreation;
• Youth Front - with sports fields for children’s activities.

Approximately 100 hectares of the “Front City” are designated for the park component, which will create a mega sports  park, wetland park, new civic facilities, museums and restaurants, and a new ferry terminal, all connected by a 7 km pedestrian access loop.

“Front Loop” is a 7-kilometer long pedestrian loop that surrounding the “Five Fronts” sections will tie them together, a pair of twin pedestrian bridges will outline the edge of the Infinity Lake where fireworks and water shows will be performed. Along the river a floodwall control system made up of walls that rise and fall according to the water level will be provided.

“The exponential growth of Shanghai has outpaced the confines of the historic core of Pudong, prompting development of satellite cities in greater Shanghai,” said Ying-Yu Hung, SWA Managing Principal in Los Angeles, “but now Shanghai sees ‘Front City’ as a step in reasserting its role as a gateway and center of commerce, and an opportunity to strengthen the urban core.”

A highlight of the firm’s design is its “friendship tower,” a multi-story structure that merges with the landscape, resembling a series of interconnected Taihu stones—a porous limestone produced at the base of Dong Ting Mountain in Suzhou by millennia of lapping water.

Morphosis principal Thom Mayne also designed a spectacular ferry terminal and cultural center for the site. Both seem to emerge from the earth, with pieces seemingly designed to combine with those from the other structures, like merging continents.

“Each Front is rooted in sustainable design and represents an important element of Shanghai’s dynamic culture,” said Hung.  “As a city built on the intersection of land and water, of past and present, of East and West ideology, Shanghai holds an important stature among the major cities of the World.”