Located in the new city center of Zhujiang, Goettsch Partners (GP) recently finished work on a 971-foot, 66-story mixed-use tower. Comprising 114,500 sm of office space, 10,000 sm of retail, and a 208-key Park Hyatt hotel at the top, the R&F Yingkai Square mixed-use tower is one component of a larger master plan of mixed use towers in Guangzhou. The Park Hyatt hotel occupies the top floors of the building with the office space existing below. Below grade, subway connections are also included.
On the design front, GP derived the building’s asymmetrically carved corners and the veining of vertical strips on the façade, which compress and stretch as they rise, from local bamboo plants. The square shape of the tower was used to work in tandem with the geometric rigidity of the street grid while the carved out corners, which look as though Paul Bunyan took a swing at the building with his giant axe and chipped bits of it away, are meant to highlight unique views available at various heights overlooking a nearby central green and the Pearl River Delta.
An indoor infinity pool runs the entire length of one side of the building with views of the Guangzhou skyline and an outdoor roof garden on level 70 provides outdoor dining or relaxation space.
The mixed-use tower has already become a distinctive addition to the city’s skyline.
“With its tight urban site, diverse functions and direct connections to transit, the building has quickly made an impact,” Paul De Santis, LEED AP, Principal and Senior Designer at GP says in a press release. “The building establishes a unique silhouette in the rapidly evolving skyline.”
The building is meant to offer a unique blend of being connected to the urban street life while also providing an intimate, luxurious experience in the upper-level hotel. The Tokyo-based firm, Super Potato, designed the hotel interiors.
Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Hotel dropoff. Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Hotel Entry. Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Hotel Sky Lounge. Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Hotel pool. Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Hotel roof terrace. Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Photo: © 1st Image courtesy of Goettsch Partners.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Five-star resort breaks ground on the Black Sea
Construction work has commenced on a five-star resort and leisure destination along the Black Sea coast in Batumi, Georgia. The RTKL-designed resort consists of two towers rising 86 and 58 meters over a two-story podium. The larger tower contains 250 guestrooms and suites while the smaller tower offers 78 residential apartments.
| Aug 11, 2010
Outdated office tower becomes Nashville's newest boutique hotel
A 1960s office tower in Nashville, Tenn., has been converted into a 248-room, four-star boutique hotel. Designed by Earl Swensson Associates, with PowerStrip Studio as interior designer, the newly converted Hutton Hotel features 54 suites, two penthouse apartments, 13,600 sf of meeting space, and seven "cardio" rooms.
| Aug 11, 2010
Aloft hotel opens at Washington National Harbor
A partnership of five developers, including the John Hardy Group and Peterson Companies, have completed a 190-room aloft hotel at Washington National Harbor, a mixed-use retail/entertainment development in Oxon Hill, Md., near Washington, D.C. Designed in conjunction with David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group, the aloft prototype offers atmospheric public spaces designed to draw guests from the...
| Aug 11, 2010
Manhattan's latest boutique hotel will be LEED Silver certified
New York-based developer Tribeca Associates has commissioned Brennan Beer Gorman Architects to design its latest mixed-use office and boutique hotel at 330 Hudson Street. Located in the downtown Hudson Square area of Manhattan, the LEED-Silver development will involve the redevelopment of a historic, eight-story warehouse building into 292,000 sf of office space, 15,000 sf of retail space, and ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Luxury Hotel required faceted design
Goettsch Partners, Chicago, designed a new five-star, 214-room hotel for the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The design-build project, with Saudi Oger Ltd. as contractor and Rayadah Investment Co. as developer, has a three-story podium supporting a 17-story glass tower with a nine-story opening that allows light to penetrate the mass of the building.
| Aug 11, 2010
Westin Hotel
Mid-twentieth-century projects are in a state of limbo. In many cities, safeguards against quick demolition don't even cover “new” buildings built after 1939, yet many such buildings may be obsolete by current standards. The Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank, located in downtown Minneapolis, was one such building, a rare example of architecture from a time when American design was ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Platinum Award: Monumentally Hip Hotel Conversion
At one time the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the Foshay Tower has stood proudly on the Minneapolis skyline since 1929. Built by Wilbur Foshay as a tribute to the Washington Monument, the 30-story obelisk served as an office building—and cultural icon—for more than 70 years before the Ryan Companies and co-developer RWB Holdings partnered with Starwood Hotels & Resor...
| Aug 11, 2010
Hilton President Hotel
Once an elegant and fashionably trendy locale, the Presidential Hotel played host to the 1928 Republican National Convention where Herbert Hoover was nominated for President, and acted as a hot spot for Kansas City Jazz in the '30s and '40s. The hotel was eventually abandoned in 1984, at which point it became a haven for vagabonds and pigeons, collecting animal waste and incurring significant s...
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.