vinayadas v
CXCC Summit 58
Why I Placed an Iceberg Atop the Tallest Building in Shanghai's Xintiandi “We as a culture, we're forgetting that we have this very, very deep connection and contact with nature.” --- From "Chasing Ice"
Let's Build an Iceberg 250 Meters Above Shanghai
The text in the brief needed to be translated into spatial form. Scientists who study continental ice sheet glaciology noticed global climate warming by monitoring the Greenland ice sheet over the years. Thus, the glacier became a precise indicator of global warming. Once the tower crown's interior becomes an iceberg and caves, the space severs its relationship with the exterior façade. The greater the contrast between the interior and the glass curtain wall that tourists are so familiar that they often overlook, the stronger the dramatic tension created, and the greater the emotional value provided to visitors. Emotional value is also a function. Using continuous white arches, the architect shaped the 56th floor, mainly constitute of small-scale spaces—small exhibition areas, meeting rooms, and lounge —as a space with continuous iceberg caves. This achieved the first step in creating iceberg in the tower crown . In this case, we can say that form is function.
Duality is Dynamics
On the 55th floor, a 120-sqm outdoor space, 25 meters high. Inspired by the idea of duality, we paired the “iceberg” with a “green heart”—a green garden. Duality also put me off recreating a classical Chinese garden like the one we planned for Shanghai Center. Instead, we deconstructed one, drawing inspiration from Yu Garden, and reassembled it as a suspended garden in a vertical way. Across the 25-meter height, the architects and landscape designers customized rippled stainless steel of different heights to wrap the floating island garden. The journey from the 55th floor to the 57th floor by the sightseeing elevator is traversing a vertical garden. Each layer of the floating garden casts a shadow on the 120 sqm floor of the 55th floor, which simulate water with black terrazzo and metal ripples. The floating garden creates more than 100% green coverage. A stainless steel moon gate and 3D-printed Taihu rocks, paying attribute to the Yu Linglong in Yu Garden, visually pair the historical and the contemporary in this reconstructed Chinese garden.
