Zhangjiang Artificial Intelligence Island

Location: Shanghai, China

Completion Date: 2018

Building Area: 158,626 sqm

Design Principal: Ping Jiang, FAIA

Design Team: Sean Lu, Dan Tang, Ruoyun Ni, Wei Zhang etc.

Client: Zhangjiang Group

Consultants:

Collaborating Local Design Institute: Shanghai Johnson Architectural & Engineering Designing Consultants Ltd.

The Innovation Park is located in the east of Wisdom Island of Zhangjiang Central District, Shanghai, and occupies an area of 158,626 square meters. The Chuanyang River and Zhihui River frames the site, which is adjacent to the Zhangjiang Future Park on the west. It consists of a number of Research & Development blocks with various space dimensions ranging from the small-scale buildings, the medium-scale affiliated building to the large-scale multi-storey buildings with sizes of 1,700 square meters, 6700 square meters and 16,000 square meters respectively.

The area is continuously vitalized by civil charm and innovative qualities within the growing community, which greatly contributes to the formation of the Innovation Park specialized in Research and Development. Our design has shown the foresight and ambition to make the project area a pleasant and unique place as well as giving the premise of its sustainability. 

Our proposal is intended to emphasize on exploring a reasonable solution for transforming land function from industrial land into office land as the crucial part of urban optimization of public space. It creates a science and technology centered community with a regional-diverse atmosphere for office spaces. The newly built innovation park expands the cityscape in the form of an urban tribe to invite reconsideration of the relationship between solid (building) and void (environment) in a broader sense. 

Creating a campus alike atmosphere and a sense of community

The masterplan formed reasonable drop-off areas by optimizing inner system of transportation and landscape, effectively distinguishing the main roads and branches and strengthening the sense of territory which emphasized these entrances of architectural groups. Meanwhile, the landscape design introduces a multi-dimensional greening system that corresponds to the neighborhood and creates a pleasant and complex spatial experience. 

These twenty-one R&D buildings of various sizes is laid out in a clustered form which creates a multiplicity of spatial conditions with different levels. Large-scale outdoor piazza and small-scale neighborhood space are effectively integrated to enhance interaction among occupants. The solid (the buildings) which is occupied and the void (the circulation, piazza and gardens) which is activated, light and shadows, the movements of people changes as time flows. These changes becomes the additional value of the design as the large area of void acts as a stimulition that encourages unique, privatized public experience. While the pedestrians wander around, paths with variable depths invite people to peep out for the views that have been framed by each sets of blocks, along with the vegetation, poetic spatial relationships have been created based on the solid and the void.

The application of the vivid color and material palette is the key approach of the reconstruction of the facades according to the diversified scales of the blocks. Glass fiber reinforced gypsum board, cement fiber board, dark stones and other eco-friendly materials within reasonable cost range have been applied to the exterior. Different scales of the volumes and façades outline a rhythmic waterfront landscape coherently. 

Discover sustainable approaches for designing and constructing office buildings 

Different from most of office project, this project is designed with a prudential consideration of regional meteorology and ecology. We evaluated the influences which the exterior environment provided to interior on the perspective of physiology , and control the ratio of solid and void on facades, reduce the usage of curtain wall, optimize the orientation and volume of architectures according to the evaluation report to reach the goal of sustainably architectural design. 

The technology of green roof has also been applied to the blocks as well as the tech of vertical vegetation. The masterplan maximizes the green area within the park to create shades and contributes against the heat island effect. Furthermore, solar batteries have been set up on top of the roofs for gaining renewable energy, and the application of the double glazed low-e glass helps to prevent the heat loss in winter. All of these methods increase the efficiency of sustainability.