Shenyang, China
The project named The Sky Garden by Zhang Baocheng, Li Hui, Zhang Xun, Liao Yang, and Zang Lei of Shanghai Hyp-Arch Architectural Design Consultant for Poly Developments & Holdings Group conveys Chinese-style romance and the imagery of dwellings “on the cloud.”
The Sky Garden has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Drawing on this romantic concept, the sales center adopts an “anti-gravity design” to create a “floating” building form, with the large and heavy stone slabs overhanging above the small, light glass curtain walls.
The architects subtly handled the glass curtain wall structure by making the frame invisible and connecting the stone exteriors with the curtain walls in a seamless manner.
With the light texture of curtain walls in contrast to the heavy touch of stone materials, the building is like a large stone floating on the clouds on a foggy night.
The minimalist facades contain sophisticated details.
Inspired by the name of the residential community “The Sky Garden,” the architects absorbed the materials and textures of local traditional architecture and reorganized the building through modern techniques to endow it with artistic aesthetics.
Moreover, the team used minimalist materials and approaches to create sophisticated exteriors, making the construction vivid and lively.
The project is the demonstration area of a residential development, with the main building functioning as the sales center.
The design makes good use of local natural, cultural, and lifestyle elements, and takes architecture as the object of art to convey the contemporary spirit with its preexistence.
The rigid block shape is derived from the overall architectural style of the project.
Adhering to the principle of “less is more,” the project expresses the architects’ thoughts on future communities through minimalist architectural languages and forms.
The architects created auspicious cloud-like patterns on facades through parametric design.
After several rounds of computer simulations, calculations, on-site proofing, and comparison, 11 groups of modular units— rectangular mirrored stainless steel panels with standardized sizes—were organized to form the sophisticated auspicious clouds-like patterns on the facades.
The facades are as minimalist as a piece of white paper, while the “auspicious clouds” are obviously the most artistic and striking highlight of this paper.
The textures of it appear as free and vivid as auspicious clouds.
Illuminated by light, the numerous mirrored stainless steel panels reflect each other, generating a magical visual effect.
The demonstration area is located at the northeast corner of the residential development.
An inward garden is designed to avoid adverse impacts from the surrounding environment.
As visitors move from the relatively closed corridor space to the expanded waterscape yard, the distinctive and conspicuous form of the sales center building comes into view.
The building unfolds towards the city, providing an iconic urban socializing space available to people from different directions in the neighborhoods.
The project utilizes beige stones and transparent glass as main materials, which are matched with mirrored stainless steel, dark grey aluminum plates, and champagne metal frames, fully presenting minimalism in form, materials, hues, and expressions.
The transparent glass, heavy stones, and exquisite aluminum plates are organically combined together in suitable proportions and echo with each other under linear frames, which highlights the minimalist and majestic beauty.
In consideration of the structure, scale, and stability of glass curtain walls, plenty of mirrored stainless steel panels with different sizes are fixed on the top and bottom of a column covered by mirrored stainless steel, which ensures the perfect visual effect, safety, and sustainability of the building.
The elegance of the building and the dynamics of stainless steel panels are like emerging clouds and mists.
The stainless steel panels abstract the dynamic rhythms of clouds to add a modern touch to the construction.
The curves create exquisite exteriors, with the artistic core of design fueled by rational calculations.
Project: The Sky Garden Demonstration Area
Architects: Shanghai Hyp-Arch Architectural Design Consultant
Lead Architects: Zhang Baocheng, Li Hui, Zhang Xun, Liao Yang, and Zang Lei
Design Team: Liu Tianxiang, Wang Feng, Cao Taihu, Liu Jia, Niu Xiaoping, Hui Nan, Zhan Yujian, and Yu Xingmin
General Contractor: China Construction Fifth Engineering Division Crop.
Client: Poly Developments & Holdings Group
Photographers: Gao Feng