We’ve seen abandoned malls and shopping centers transformed into some pretty cool things, including affordable micro housing and homeless shelters. In China, as a booming e-commerce market starts to drive many traditional brick-and-mortar markets out of business, architects are finding another new use for the massive structures: as offices for the country’s many new startups and entrepreneurs.

One such project is a co-working space called SOHO2 3Q by AIM Architecture. SOHO is a Chinese commercial building developer, and its 3Q brand is a co-working platform that Forbes called “Uber for offices.” Catering to a large number of small and medium-sized companies that prefer to rent office space by the week, month or six-year period instead of signing longer-term leases, 3Q has opened about 30 spaces around the country, many of them built for the purpose (including Wangjing SOHO by Zaha Hadid Architects.)

But SOHO realized that with 25,000 square meters of blank space (about 269,000 square feet), a disused shopping mall might be just what they need.

“The first consideration was approach. AIM decided it had to be bold. Strong colours and strong patterns would add life to the often-drab mall (and do double-duty as way finding). The space would be used by ambitious entrepreneurs, start-ups and companies not tied to old models. Bosses looking for more than a corner window in a glass tower. In one way, the project reflected us: it was not conventional. Re-programming a retail space brought up questions of the use of space in our cities, how interaction works and how to foster communities. This generation of workers was not content with a cubicle. A moot point, really, as filling the massive space would have required all of the cubicles in Beijing. AIM would have to turn that thinking on its side.”

“From this perspective, the constraints of the existing retail design became opportunities: where a shopping centre would say hallway, AIM could say island, a natural place to meet while using the home-style kitchens or sitting at the communal table. This was a greater challenge with two massive atriums, which carried in daylight but presented their own problems: how to maintain the peace of the open space but make it useful to 3Q’s community of companies?”

“The answer was in an oversized oak staircase, spilling down from the entrance into the basement floor. The slope of the stairs frames the space as a venue for lectures or events, transforming an area meant for personal consumption into one meant for community development. A second atrium allowed AIM to re-imagine the built world as a natural community, quite literally. In The Park, the great expanse comes back down to the human scale, with stands of live bamboo and glass meeting rooms that evoke backyard conservatories.”

AIM says the project ultimately feels like a “neighborhood” of companies and individual entrepreneurs, relating to each other or retreating to do business within public and private areas and creating organic networks.

An idea like this could work even in malls that are still in use, since the top floor is often the first to be abandoned when tenancy is low. That puts workers up near skylights, away from the bustle of shoppers but still within reach of restaurants and businesses.

Featuring the architecture firm’s signature undulations and parametric curves, the new Daxing Airport in Beijing by Zaha Hadid Architects will accommodate 72 million travelers per year by 2025. Launching on October 1st to coincide with China’s 70th anniversary, the airport is nicknamed “the starfish” for reasons that become obvious when you see it photographed from above.

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Boasting the world’s largest single-building terminal, Daxing Airport was developed to ease congestion at the existing Beijing Airport. But don’t expect to fly through it anytime soon: it’s basically getting a soft launch, with only China United Airlines flying domestic flights there through October 27. Other Chinese and international airlines will slowly start scheduling flights through Daxing after that, with relocation expected fo finish in 2021.

“Echoing principles within Chinese architecture that organize interconnected spaces around a central courtyard, the terminal’s design guides all passengers seamlessly through the relevant departure, arrival or transfer zones towards the grand courtyard at its center – a multi-layered meeting space at the heart of the terminal,” say the architects.

“Eight flowing forms within the terminal’s vaulted roof reach to the ground to support the structure and bring natural light within, directing all passengers towards the central courtyard. Natural light also enters the terminal via a network of linear skylights that provide an intuitive system of navigation throughout the building, guiding passengers to and from their departure gates.”

“The compact radial configuration of the terminal allows a maximum number of aircraft to be parked directly at the terminal with minimum distances from the center of the building, providing exceptional convenience for passengers and flexibility in operations. 79 gates with airbridges connect directly to the terminal while BDIA’s facilities can quickly process the passengers of six full A380 aircraft simultaneously.”

The new airport’s code is PKX. It gets a portion of its power from solar panels, and its centralized heating with waste heat recovery is supported by a ground-source heat pump system. The airport also features rainwater collection and the natural storage, permeation and purification of up to 2.8 million cubic meters of water in new wetlands, lakes and streams to counter the “heat island” effect on the local microclimate in summer.

As urban planners grapple with the need for creative flood management systems in cities around the world, Zaha Hadid Architects provides an interesting example in Hamburg.

Located along the Elbe River, the new Niederhafen River Promenade offers two functions in one: a flood wall and a riverfront promenade. Set in a popular tourist area alongside one of the city’s most important public spaces, the new promenade offers views of the Elbe, links to adjacent neighborhoods and lots of room for pedestrians, food stalls, cafes and street performers, with shops and public utilities set into the structure at street level on the side that faces the city.

The barrier at Niederhafen was first built in the 1960s in the aftermath of severe storm surge floods that caused 315 fatalities and destroyed the homes of 60,000 residents, but according to modern calculations, it was no longer high enough to be effective. In addition to raising the total height of the barrier by .8 meters, the overburdened supporting elements of the structure needed to be replaced. The city announced a competition to design a redevelopment, awarding the project to Zaha Hadid Architects.

Standing 8.6 meters (28 feet) high on the eastern side and 8.9 meters (29 feet) high on the western side, the barrier is now tall enough to protect the city from maximum winter storm surges and extreme high tides. The architects carved sculptural staircases into the sides at various points, creating angular amphitheaters that encourage people to linger and enjoy the views and “generating an oscillating sequence in the river promenade as it repeatedly widens and narrows.”

“Dedicated cycle lanes at street level run the length of the flood protection barrier. Wide ramps at Baumwell and Langdungsbrücken connect the river promenade with street level and provide accessibility for all. A third central ramp enables service vehicles to access the promenade and Überseebrücke.”

“The river promenade is divided into two sections with different spatial qualities. The zone to the west is at a larger scale, offering wide views downstream of all shipping activity on the river. To the east, the port’s marina creates amore intimate atmosphere with a long ramp alongside the amphitheater leading visitors down to the water’s edge.”

Of course, concrete flood walls aren’t right for every city, especially those where aquatic wildlife habitats have been destroyed and need to be restored. Some cities are working on plans to do just that, like Chicago’s “Wild Mile.” Read more about how “urban rewinding” can help make cities more flood resistant.

Photos by Piet Niemann via Zaha Hadid Architects

A whole new smart city is set to begin construction west of Moscow, Russia, and Zaha Hadid Architects has been selected to help design it. The firm’s proposal is a phased development prioritizing residential interactions with each other, nature and new technologies, creating “a diverse ecology” of spaces for living, working, education and leisure. The Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoke masterplan aims to be a global benchmark for smart, sustainable cities, incorporating smart tech to increase quality of life.

Zaha Hadid Architects worked with Russia-based TPO Pride Architects to realize a segment of the overall project (alongside fellow winners Nikken Sekkei, UNK Project, Archea Associate and ABD Architects.) Developed in response to a rapidly growing population population in Moscow, the new city will feature 4 million square meters (more than 43 million square feet) of new buildings spread over 1,137 acres.

Much of that land will be dedicated to parks and forests along the Moscow River, and the city will have a 74-acre lake at its center. It’s expected to house 66,500 residents and include everything you’d expect to find in a modern metropolis: hospitals, schools, offices and shopping districts. A metro line will link it to Moscow.

In terms of design, Zaha Hadid Architects’ renderings are certainly standouts with their signature organic shapes and looping ribbons stretching from the rooflines down to the ground.

From the Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye development website:

“The Zaha Hadid Architects team, in a consortium with CPU Pride, proposed a global project idea: a town whose mission is to develop creativity and entrepreneurship. The team proposed to define the ‘cores’ of the area by building additional objects of public infrastructure, such as art residences (cultural core), a laboratory of urban solutions (intellectual core), year-round public spaces (spatial core), and also proposed a number of iconic objects on the central square with the firm’s trademark style—bionic and parametric architecture. The concept’s slogan is ‘satellite town’. Members of the jury noted that it was the first time they were seeing a concept from this firm, in which everything starts from people, rather than a concept dedicated to ‘pure architecture.’”

“Working with specialist teams in Russia and Europe, we developed a people-centric design for a smart interconnected city that brings people together not only through innovative technology but also through organizing the public realm; building a community that integrates the natural aspects of the site with principles of openness and inclusivity in high quality architecture suited for the 21st century,” says Christos Passas, Project Director at Zaha Hadid Architects.

When artificial structures mimic the contours of topographic maps, which are almost sculptural in their own right, they become an extension of the land itself. The lines on the map that indicate changes in elevation, following the curves of dips and projections, easily transform into flat abstracted planes delineating the floors of a building or the levels of a stepped landscape design. Some of these built environments follow the existing shapes of the land beneath them and others create new ones altogether, reimagining the geography of the setting.

This concept model for an art gallery on UC Berkeley’s campus doubles as a bridge spanning Strawberry Creek. The design engages with the topography of the site allowing visitors to either cross or easily access the creek.#conceptmodel #architecture #ucberkeley #strawberrycreek pic.twitter.com/h1KqblfJap

— Jacoby Architects (@JacobyArch) November 17, 2017

Architects often start with 3D visual models of the terrain of a building site, which may be abstracted into layers of flat wood or foam. These artificial landscapes make it easier to envision how the new structure will fit into its surroundings, and it’s easy to see how they could have an influence on the design of the buildings themselves.

Some topographical architecture is made to blend in, presenting itself almost as if it grew naturally out of the hills that surround it. Krakow University student Adrian Kasperski designed a new natural park venue for the Island of Fogo after its previous one was destroyed by molten lava just a year after its opening, and he used the topography of the land as a guide to avoid similar catastrophes in the future and help camouflage the low-rise facility. It presents itself as a “slight cut in the caldera” with elongated plaza frames that dip down to follow the slopes.

In the Guangxi province of China, the new Suiseki Hall by Zhanghua Architects is as fluid as the body of water beside it, suggesting the shape of hills, yet there are no hills nearby. The architects actually wanted to represent a balance between the flat land and the craggy mountains, taking inspiration from the pattern of stone as it erodes beneath fast-flowing water.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ predilection for flowing organic shapes and parametric modeling naturally lends itself to topographical compositions, like the Beko Masterplan in Belgrade. Paying tribute to the region’s modernist traditions, this proposal embeds a new community into the surrounding mountains. Intriguingly, the flowing volumes seem to have been plucked and stretched right out of the more conventional building beside them, each of their floors like a rocky stratification.

In other cases, dramatic peaks project out of the ground like shards of stone, conjuring a mountain-like sense of solidity. Graphic structures like the Festival Hall in Era by Delugan Meissl Associated Architects take the shapes of natural landscape features and turn them into oversized inhabitable sculptures. The Festival Hall “developed from the topographical conditions, placing it in an adequate relationship with the existing Passionsspielhaus,” the architects explain. It works to achieve a harmony between itself and the existing historical building beside it as well as the mountains in the distance.

Projects like BC Prestige by 4M Architecture aim to create mountains where there are none, yet their silhouettes aren’t exactly natural, almost seeming like someone took a topographic map and sliced out some of the higher elevations, plopping them down elsewhere. Similarly, the Topographic House by MiAS Arquitectes is like an artificial crag overlooking the sea.

“Rising Over the Traces of History,” a design for a new governmental historic and cultural complex in Kaliningrad by ONZ Architects and Ercan Coban Architects, literally turns this concept upside-down. Its building is flat on top and along the sides, but its underbelly is curved to complement the hills and valleys of the land underneath it.

Named for the dramatic Dolomite mountain range in which it’s set, the Dolomitenblick holiday apartment building abstracts the steep slopes, making each shift in elevation into its own level. A diagonal cut offering entrance to the building slices its facade in half, almost as if the “rock” of the structure has been shaped by falling water. “Besides its functional meaning, this incision becomes the main defining element of the building” from the cut at either side a strip unfolds that forms the balustrade of a generous covered balcony and ends into the surrounding topography. Following the steep natural hillside with each floor the strips and the facade jump back,” says Plasma Studio.

Plasma is well known for “drawing landscapes into buildings,” taking natural shapes and stretching them into more geometric-looking volumes that remain organic nonetheless. This tendency is especially pronounced in projects like its Ggantija World Heritage Park proposal, the dynamic Esker Haus with its slatted timber facade mimicking a “stratified geological formation,” the similar Strata Hotel in Italy “developed as a free-flowing topography” and the Flowing Gardens project developed for the Beijing Olympics, which almost seems to recreate the look of a topographic map when viewed from above. Plasma notes that one of its main strategies is to seamlessly integrate architecture, landscape and urbanism.

Of course, it’s only natural that topographical design trickles down to landscape architecture as well. Designed with stormwater management in mind, the San Martín de la Mar Square in Cantabria, Spain by the appropriately named Zigzag Arquitectura looks like a topographic map come to life with its series of terraced platforms. The square integrates permeable paving and strips of grass to navigate a steep change in slope and make the overlook at the top more accessible to all.

Kengo Kuma’s Naturescape, a topographical landscape of stone and water created for the Urban Stories exhibition of contemporary living in Milan, interprets traditional Zen gardens in a delightfully graphic way. The layers of stone follow curves around the room, creating pathways, clusters of bamboo and pools of water.
http://www.zigzagarquitectura.com/