The winning design of a large international architectural competition, ‘The Two Towers’, was recently announced in Shenzhen, China. The team selected to design this new Shenzhen landmark – comprising 100.000 square meters in total – is a constellation of ADEPT (DK) and Urbanus (CHN) with VSA (HK), Max Fordham LLP (GB) and Beijing CCI Architectural Design Co, LTD (CHN). The jury meeting was hosted at the Shenzhen Municipal Planning Building with Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne as chairman of the jury. More information on the competition winners after the break.
As the competition title suggests, the project is comprised of two towers, the CDB Tower (150 meters) and the Minsheng Financial Tower (120 meters), functioning as new headquarters for the two fi nancial institutions. The challenge of designing two new towers in Shenzhen raised the question as to what kind of tower could be added in the context of an already impressive skyline. Analysis of this context suggested considerable emphasis has been placed in recent years on achieving extravagant, visually unique forms amongst the towers themselves – a situation that has generally occurred at the expense of the quality and liveliness of the urban spaces at their base.
