Public
Shenzhen Urban Planning Bureau
By Daniel Elsea

For many years, designing a building for a government agency in one of China’s big cities meant little more than creating yet another white-tile box with offices inside. When the Shenzhen Urban Planning Bureau headquarters opened in 2004, however, it raised the standard for civic architecture in China and showed that innovative design could be applied to even a building for a municipal bureaucracy.

Designed by the Shenzhen-and-Beijing-based firm Urbanus, the building is a quiet statement of a new Chinese Modernism.

The building houses offices, as well as exhibition and conference facilities for the city’s planning department. But it also points Shenzhen in a new direction, away from the “generic” construction that has characterized the city during the past 20 years in its rapid transformation from a tiny fishing village into a bustling metropolis of 6 milion residents. Concerned that Shenzhen was a city severely lacking historical and cultural depth, Urbanus [cut and Pei] conceived the building as a place that would impart a set of values to its surroundings. A compact footprint and clean lines would signify a sense of modesty and solemnity appropriate to a government building. And long, clear-glass facades would express a new transparency in government operations.

“Openness and flexibility are the major characteristics of the design,” says Pei Zhu, who was an Urbanus partner when the building was designed but now has his own studio in Beijing.

On the north side of the building, the architects set back the glass facade and used overhanging floors to shade those below. This strategy, along with a double-layer of glass, reduces the amount of sunlight heating the building without restricting views outside. In addition, the glass facades are active with interlaid quadratic pieces of glass that are arranged irregularly, creating a visually exciting effect.

Reflecting pools outside the building add a calming note to the landscape and help connect the building to its site. The architects used water inside the building too, adding shallow pools to the atriums. On upper floors, bridges cross over the pools, connecting one side of the building to the other.

Offices are arranged in double-height units inserted into the concrete-frame building. The units can expand or contract as needed, giving the client a degree of flexibility in its office layouts.

The building also expresses a strong environmental ethic, using a variety of strategies to reduce the energy needed to heat and cool the interiors. The atriums serve as buffer zones between Shenzhen’s hot and humid climate and the internal office units and also provide natural stack ventilation. Hot air escapes through roof vents and draws fresh air inside that is cooled as it passes over the pools before entering the offices.