SWA | Urban Kaleidoscope——Shenzhen Tian’an Cyber Park
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Since 2014, SWA’s Los Angeles team has been leading the landscape design of Longgang Tian’an Cyber Park Phase 4 (T4): the first project in which Tian’an Group combines retail mixed-use with a corporate campus. In this project, the client wanted to explore a new urban corporate complex experience – one that not only gives entrepreneurs a comfortable and convenient workplace, but that also establishes a vibrant commercial nucleus and an urban park that brings a sense of belonging to Shenzhen. The landscape design’s “urban kaleidoscope” concept promises a constant reorganization of fresh, vibrant, and avant-garde elements, giving a unique artistic expression to the venue and creating endless new patterns and experiences. It also brings new and exciting ideas to corporate employees and neighborhood residents, encouraging innovation and sharing.
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Tian’an Group's core products serves small and medium-sized companies by providing them with leasable office parks, corporate headquarters, factories, and staff buildings. Many of these once-growing companies are now familiar names, including Huawei, Alibaba, IDG, etc. The whole effort has been divided into three phases. From 2014-2015, the work focused on the corporate headquarters building and the area connected to the already completed T3; from 2017-2019, the focus was the commercial and residential complex facing Huangge Road, a commercial plaza and inner street. From 2019 to the present, the super-high-rise office building and hotel area have been undertaken.
A Creative Campus with A Human Touch
The north side of the site is a sports park combined with a bus terminal; the east and west sides use the space between the city road setback line and the buildings to create a street-level linear park; and the south side is a vibrant plaza and a pedestrian corridor connecting Phase III. These urban open spaces are linked into a vibrant ring throughout the park, surrounding two commercial inner streets running north and south of the park, the headquarters complex in the quieter southwest corner, and the hotel, with super high-rise office block, in the northwest corner.
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The landscape of the park is completely open to the public, with a vibrant plaza and sunken theater strung along the pedestrian street. Throughout the park, the team has sought to create a humane, urban landmark where office, life, and entertainment are integrated. The development team has also named the project "FUN TOWN.”
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A Linear Park with Surprises
The commercial complex unfolds facing Huangge Road, with a 1.5m height difference between Huangge Road and the commercial interface, and the team designed planting areas with a gradual retreat to integrate this change in height. A set of large, welcoming steps and an interactive water feature are inserted at the commercial entrance area. Visitors pass by the stainless-steel folding surfaces and ascend to the top of the steps. The reflective pool, with a geometric pattern at the bottom, comes into view and extends toward the commercial entrance, creating a welcoming atmosphere.
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The jogging path crosses through the greenbelt continuously, moving diagonally through the light spray and reflective pool and connecting to the city park on West Lin Long Ping Road. It also uses pitched gradient lines with a non-slip finish to ensure safe play. The end of the green belt is also equipped with a set of bent linear, variable-section seating benches, echoing the early use of terrazzos in Chinese landscapes.
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Energetic Commercial Inner Streets
The headquarters buildings, which are diagonally inserted into the street, become the backdrop of the lively commercial area, and the zigzags of the commercial building volumes at the Huangge Road interface culminate in a single cloud-shaped building at the end of the commercial street. To continue the dialogue between landscape and architecture, the team used a “folded” strip paving pattern to attract foot traffic from each main entrance into the commercial street, linking the nodes of experience. At the end of the commercial street, the paving strips transform into a kaleidoscopic vortex. These folding linear strips are like the separating prism inside a kaleidoscope. Visitors walk along the folding line, and lines suddenly shift in direction, as if a curious child were rotating a kaleidoscope to show complete different and magical scenery.
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Connecting Nodes Making Full Use of Land
At each stage of the design, the landscape team analyzed and proposed optimizations for the planned fire lanes, fire landing surfaces, and driveways for surface traffic and underground garages. The design team intend to integrate hard pavement as much as possible by fine-tuning the fire lane and landing surface, leaving maximum space for the landscape design.
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On the south side of the site, the parcel between T3 and T4 is divided by an underground driveway. This driveway and its air shaft presented a less-than-optimal plaza boundary; the team tried various approaches to mitigate this deficiency, exploring methods of both brightening or fading its edge. Eventually, the team employed a corten-steel retaining wall that steps out over the underground driveway to create a span bridge surrounded by planting beds. As a result, the underground lane disappears from the view of the visitors of the plaza, and the crossing bridge also strengthens the connection between T3 and the plaza.
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The connection between the commercial area and the corporate campus is a triangular, multi-purpose sunken plaza. In the original architectural proposal, this plaza served as an atrium; however, after analyzing foot traffic and sight lines, the design team proposed an outdoor theater for this area that leverages its height difference. Seeing the potential of such a place, the client was very supportive of this idea. Although a light façade was removed from the design here, an urban stage for the old and young to enjoy together takes its place.
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A Comfortable and Convenient Workplace
In the corporate headquarters area, the building volumes are a series of right-angled equilateral triangles. Starting with circulation, the team simulated the behavior of pedestrians who tend to take the shortcut around the buildings’ sharp corners. Using the information available at the site, the design team mapped “hot spots” on the site where pedestrians would be inclined to linger. The siting of the planting beds and wayfinding elements were then combined to create a spatial design that complements the diagonal road.
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This comfortable and convenient campus landscape, which is completely open to the public, provides a pleasant and relaxing experience for employees, as well as social space for the surrounding residents.
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Kaleidoscopic Design Elements
Tian’an Cyber Park has distinctive architecture: the sharply angled inner streets of the building extend diagonally through the site. Layers of retreats, terraces, and gray spaces form a three-dimensional matrix. In contrast with the buildings’ sleek aluminum plate glass curtain wall, the landscape is a multifaceted prism of color and temperature. Within the landscape’s layers, the architecture also gives rise to diverse expressions – small “stages” where people experience the site in different ways. Inspired by the idea of the prism, team conceptualized a kaleidoscope: a colorful lens that blooms with a dazzling array of patterns, reflections, and refractions. Planes and elevations, mirrors and frosted surfaces, geometry and curves are constantly shuffled to create a light, magical spatial experience, while at the same time integrating the culture of Tian’an Group and the surrounding area for a distinctly human touch.
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The finish of the stainless-steel water feature reflects the ever-changing lights along the street, furthering the kaleidoscope concept in constantly changing refractions that invite children to come forward and explore. A special node was required to solve the problem of water drying out at the corner of the trapezoid. The design team used the principle of rain chains to design a set of “water steps” that evenly replenish feed water to the prominent trapezoidal folds.
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The design team also designed a custom-made digital water curtain arch for Tian’an Cyber Park. This arch has several noteworthy design details. Most of the arch’s finished surface is brushed stainless steel, with a mirrored surface only appearing at the corner. Visitors will first be attracted by the digital water curtain’s pattern and lighting, only to then find the mirrored stainless steel reflecting their own smiling faces.
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The commercial inner street is also equipped with a circular mirrored bench planting pool, which distorts the reflected paving and activity scenes for a constantly changing scene. A hollowed-out seating bench, which surrounds a Delonix Regia tree and glows from within, invites children to explore the inside through a small opening. The lines of the bench also echo the cloud-shaped building monolith beyond.
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The “hot spot” areas around the building employ square paving, while the main traffic space for pedestrians employs right-angled equilateral, colored paved triangles to echo the shape of the building. The abrupt “jumping” among the triangles’ different shades of gray of is achieved with black and white gray stone in different finishes. After various tests, a polished, slotted black Shanxi surface was selected for the darkest shade. The half-centimeter-deep grooves in these triangles creates strong shadows on the bright, sunny days of southern China, giving depth to the polished surface.
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This project has been in progress for eight years, with each area reflecting design elements that are forward-thinking yet timeless. Tian’an Cyber Park is positioned as an incubator of growing enterprises – a “petri dish” of new ideas within a shared of urban public space. Each design and modification balance the harmony between form and function, and each inventive idea has been implemented with the support of the owner and the coordination of various consultants. The design team would like to thank all of the partners who worked together to overcome the project’s challenges, enabling Tian’an Cyber Park’s culture and ethos to be colorfully presented. In this part of the city, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to design a true “urban kaleidoscope,” where people can share laughter and memorable experiences.
©Chill Shine
Project Name：Longgang Tian’an Cyber New City T4 Design
Project Location：Longgang, Shenzhen,Guangdong
Design Area：Site: 66,162m2, Landscape: 45,058m2
SWA Los Angeles: Ning Deng, Jing Zhang, Ben Boisclair, Woonghee Lee, Nandi Yang, Hui Lin, Mengyi Li
Architects：
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Super Geometry Architects, Ltd.
A+E Design
Consulatants：
ShenZhen DongDa Landscape Design Co.,Ltd
Zhenzhen Shuiti Co.,Ltd
Graphia International Ltd