A Gate of Many Scales

The modern history of East Asian architecture has seen tall buildings dominate cities on a vast scale, from branded commercial landmarks to dense repetitive clusters of residential high-rises. From the 2000s, functions were vertically layered up, seductive shops beneath stacks of offices, sandwiched between five-star hotels, crowned by rooftop bars, all forming a continuous extension of the street itself. Today, not only must towers be designed with open-ended functions subject to shifting market demands and adaptive futures, yet nature and public space are creeping up their façades to improve their liveability.

Skyscrapers, it seems, are traversing towards vertical urbanism, with dimensional hybrid environments that mirror the multi-faceted diversity of our horizontal urban worlds. “Tall buildings are becoming more porous and less monolithic,” explains Christian Tschersich, Associate Partner at LAVA, offering examples such as the CapitaSpring skyscraper in Singapore or the Spiral in New York, which are infused by relatively urban geometries that, although perpendicular to their grounded counterparts suggest similar patterns of colonization, in another step forward towards blurring boundaries between public and private, indoor and out. “Façades are becoming permeated with outdoor spaces; terraces layered between levels providing easier access to fresh air, and towers embedded with plant-filled, social atriums that echo alfresco atmospheres.”

This permeation of vibrant metropolitan hybridity into city skyscrapers is expressed in LAVA’s master plan for the Zhejiang Gate Tower complex in Hangzhou, which was further detailed and implemented by a local architectural firm. Here, five flexible mixed-use buildings housing offices, residential and retail, taper and blend into a calm oasis of pedestrianized public space at the center of the master plan, with car access limited to the perimeter. While the plan’s two defining 280-meter structures will become the tallest buildings in Hangzhou, the use of platforms and canopies at their base creates a fluid rippling topography that connects all five buildings visually and functionally, mediating between urban and human scales in a smooth integration of landscape, architecture and public space. A third 90m tall tower and two pavilions are oriented towards the central public space. “This curved, linear language is derived from nature itself,” says Tschersich, “folding up into the tower and bringing a richness and variation that is unique compared to the surrounding buildings.”

Zhejiang Gate also performs a broader role for the city itself, with its twin towers referencing the Chinese characters for ‘gate.’ The symbol marks the emergence of an urbanizing former industrial area of Hangzhou, south of the Qiantang River. The heart of the rapidly growing Chinese city of over 10 million people lies between the scenic West Lake and the north of the river, where a thriving business and technology district will soon see new buildings, including the Grand Canal Museum complex by Herzog and de Meuron and the Hangzhou International Sports Center by Zaha Hadid Architects, both under construction. “We formed a visual gate and dynamic symbol for the new neighborhood south of the river, otherwise defined by a repetitive array of towers. It is not a literal gate, but the idea is that it guides views to make an axis visible on an urban level,” says Tschersich.

The master plan manifests as a hybrid bridge for urban scales, smoothly connecting the rich variation of a thriving neighborhood to the evolving fabric of the city, concludes Tschersich, “People want to live in sync with the rhythm of nature and community, so buildings must hybridize across scales from urban to intimate, embedding both into the city and the human experience.”