The Cradle of the World
Today’s China is not only a country with ancient history, traditions and culture, but also one of the most flourishing states, where next to ancient palaces and temples are located impressive samples of ultra-modern architecture. Population growth has provoked not only the expansion of urban areas, but also forcing the cities growth in height. Modern projects boggle one’s imagination for their unusual expressive architecture and amaze with the scale and genius of design ideas. Chinese architects and engineers have become famous throughout the world, erecting buildings that are not only inferior to European and American counterparts, but sometimes superior to them. China’s high-rise architecture vividly demonstrate cutting-edge technology, an impressive scale and the latest design solutions, often more remarkable than the famous skyscrapers of Dubai.
Everyone knows how much our overbuilt cities resemble a concrete jungle, but we bet that you have never heard about concrete mountains! Tonkin Liu, A London-based architecture firm has just revealed its competition-winning design, called the Cradle Towers in Zhengzhou, China. The design is a combination of five mixed-use towers surrounded by an ample green space, mimicking the nearby Songshan Mountains.
The Cradle Towers of Zhengzhou comprises five mixed residential, office and hotel towers that swoop out of podium housing retail and leisure. Hollowed out to form a ring, the podium forms a threshold between the city and a soft, sheltered landscape within. The architects won the invited design competition in 2016, selected over entries from Rocco Design Architects in Hong Kong and other practices based in China. The 434,000 sqm mixed-use development is budgeted at £118 million.
The city is square and the sky is round, believed ancient Chinese people. Zhengzhou is the cradle of the nation’s civilisation. It sits at the heart of one of the earliest settlement areas of ancient China. Emblematic of the peaks of the nearby Songshan mountain-scape and the Round Sky and Square Earth proverb, the Cradle Towers celebrates the city’s origins as it looks to build its future.
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Based on the materials provided by Tonkin Liu and comfortasia.net