Elegant Simplicity

Recently was completed the construction of the Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Zifeng Tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) and located in the Gaoxin District of Nanchang. The building was voted this year’s “favorite completed high-rise building” by the nationwide technical staff of the Greenland Group, the building’s owner and China’s leading development company.

The elegant simplicity of the 268-meter, 56 story tower contributed to the “favorite building” recognition in voting by hundreds of Greenland staff prior to the state-owned company’s annual leadership meeting, according to the design team at SOM Chicago. A defined rectangular massing emphasized by a strong diagrid shading fin system and a unique “Great Window” gives the building a striking presence on the Nanchang skyline creating a new icon tower at the center of the new high tech zone. Office floors occupy the bottom two-thirds of the tower.

InterContinental’s new Hua Lux brand hotel stacks on top of this zone, occupying the tower’s top 20 stories. This change in program is expressed by the “Great Window”—a distinct aperture carved into the tower’s mass. Formally, the Great Window transitions the floorplates to a suitable size and layout for the hotel function. Aesthetically, it marks the tower with a strong design, distinguishing it from the other towers that compose Nanchang’s urban fabric. SOM’s integrated Architecture and Engineering approach allowed for the inclusion of high performance systems, including the aluminum triangular sun-shading fins that trace up the building’s four faces.

The fins shade the tower, preventing excessive solar heat gain and glare to the interior. The fin intersections are a structural node with integrated white LED lights that, when illuminated at night, make the system’s diagrid pattern and the tower’s rectangular form glow across Gaoxin. The system is part of a comprehensive suite of high performance architecture and engineering elements that have won the tower LEED® Silver accreditation.

The integration of architecture and landscape results in a cohesive design extending from the ground plane to the building facades and podium rooftop. Visitors are immersed in an experiential landscape from their arrival to the site from transit lines located at the south end of the project site. Greenland’s Dr. Wu Mingang, Technical Director of the Greenland Group Jiangxi Real Estate Division, also acknowledged the honor. “It is an important moment every year for our technical team leaders to express their appreciation for work well done by voting in a number of project categories. Greenland Group is pleased that this year’s choice for best completed high-rise building is SOM Chicago’s Nanchang Zifeng Tower.”

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Materials provided by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM)