On December 1st, 2020, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) China Awards was held at the Chengdu Niccolo Hotel in Chengdu, China.
The event brough together over 100 design companies and nearly 300 designers from around the world covering architectural design, interior design and landscape design, to celebrate and recognize forward-thinking and cutting-edge work from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Over 300 entries were submitted and judged by an international jury comprised of over 30 leading design experts.
Jiang Wu, Senior Architectural Designer, and Sophia Yang, Business Development Executive, both attended the event on behalf of Benoy.
Benoy’s recent project, Houhai Center in Shenzhen, won two of WAF China’s most coveted awards: Best Future Project and Excellent Design Award.
Gregory Kovacs, Design Director at Benoy based in the Hong Kong Studio, led the overall vision for the project and together with his team, created the architecture and interior design for this dynamic headquarters tower for one of the world’s leading social media companies.
Gregory shares his thoughts on the winning project:
“Do office towers have to be generic? How could a skyscraper represent its owner even without any signage? How could it be inseparable from the culture of Shenzhen and build a local community? Our design attempts to answer these challenges.
We envisioned a tower that reflects the company it houses — dynamic, inclusive, communicating with its context, and just like the online platforms of the firm, broadcasts interactive media. It brings people together, building communities within the company and its local users. We are humbled that we have been recognized by WAF China with two significant awards which recognize the social, environmental and economic contributions of the project.”
Located in the newly-developed HouHai District in Shenzhen, HouHai Center is a new 62,000 square meter headquarters tower for a leading tech company in China. Surrounded by other soaring office buildings, this headquarters tower is an unmistakable icon rooted in its urban environment that seamlessly blends work, social, and creativity into a cohesive experience.
The tower integrates a series of floorplates that can seamlessly shift functions from being a completely private office space, to collaborative working environment, communal break out space, a rented out space to other partnering businesses, or public areas comprised of cultural, entertainment and retail spaces.
The future-proof design reinvents the podium and turns into vertical elements that merge public and private spaces, vertical circulation, sky gardens and atriums, flexible spaces and recreational amenities — all sheathed by an interactive façade that broadcasts dynamic content to the city.
