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Why the only way is up in China
According to one of the architects helping to design many of the super-tall buildings under construction in China, the country can help develop a new, thoroughly modern style of city that is in keeping with 21st Century lifestyles.
“The important thing is the greater urban densification and design of China,” Paul Katz, the president of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), says. “The quality of life in the major urban centres in China has improved incredibly in the last 20 years. And I think more and more cities would like to see their growth occur in a smart, intelligent way.”
The Shanghai World Financial Centre, developed by Mori Building Co., was recently completed in the centre of that city, stretching 101 floors, or 492 metres, into the sky. It is now the tallest building in China, and has the highest roof and the highest occupied space in the world. It’s the second tallest in the world, behind Taipei 101, according to the Council on Tall Buildings, at least until the Burj Dubai is completed later this year.
The Shanghai World Financial Centre has 4.1 million square feet of offices, and there is a Park Hyatt hotel on the upper floors of the building, which is the highest hotel in the world. “It is a city within a city,” says Katz, whose firm designed the building. “It dominates the skyline – it’s a very pure, clean image.”
The building has an aperture at its top, a hole through which you can see the sky. The space was originally round and intended as a ‘moon gate’ but the architects changed it to a rectangle after complaints that the circular design too closely resembled the Japanese flag. Some people say it now looks like a giant bottle opener.
Within the opening, there is a bridge spanning the width of the building, a skywalk with a glass floor through which visitors can look down on Shanghai. The attraction is drawing around 10,000 people per day.
Katz says the company designed the building to look “light” and streamlined despite its massive size. Although it is intended as an iconic landmark, there is function besides form. Such major buildings can help shape the structure of a city, bringing a much more efficient use of space and more people-friendly connections to public transportation. They can help prevent the negative sprawl that you find in some countries such as the United States, where development has proceeded without much of a coherent plan.
China’s property market is showing signs of life again in 2009, after a hard year last year. Property sales leapt 45.3 percent by value for the five months through May, compared with a year earlier, to 1 trillion yuan.
The upturn suggests China’s stimulus measures are taking effect. The Ministry of Commerce has also submitted proposals that are designed to attract foreign investment, particularly in the property sector, to the State Council in China. Foreign investment in China fell 17.8 percent in May from a year earlier, to US$6.4 billion, the eighth straight monthly decline. The government is now apparently keen to turn that tide and bring foreign investors back into the property market.
Foreign money may influence how Asian cities develop. Asia is unusual compared with Europe, in particular, but also the industrial cities of North America in that its cities can, to some degree, skip straight from an agricultural economy to a knowledge economy without going through a long period of industrialisation.
That’s what KPF hopes to see happen. “We think the tall buildings are very important for development in Asia,” Katz says. Such super-tall structures have the scale to support large retail complexes, as well as offices, hotels and sometimes a residential component.
The current architectural thinking is that such developments are better suited to modern lifestyles. The 19th Century industrial city and the 20th Century suburban city are giving way to a new kind of development.
“Mixed-use buildings and mixed-use cities are very appropriate for the 21st Century, where the lines between life, work and play are completely broken down because of technology and the way we work,” Katz says. “The traditional model of the 20th Century city, where you have one area where you work, one area where you live and one area where you are educated is outdated.”
Asia has the opportunity to be at the forefront of this trend, since its economies are developing fast, and in some cases can bypass the old industrial-style stage of development. That’s particularly true in China, where the command-style, centrally planned economy can dictate how cities are structured.
The Shanghai World Financial Centre does not contain a residential component. A better example of a truly mixed-use project would be Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, where offices that have attracted many finance-industry tenants sit alongside condominiums, an extensive shopping mall and restaurants.
In Hong Kong, the International Commerce Centre development in West Kowloon also combines offices, residential blocks and retail. If the government ever gets its act together, it may eventually have an arts hub, too.
In Shanghai, Pudong is almost exclusively an office area, reflecting a less-modern way of thinking when it was first planned in 1990. The area sits, of course, on the east bank of the Huangpu river, opposite the older Puxi neighbourhood and the Bund. Here, alongside the Shanghai World Financial Centre, you’ll also find the super-tall Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai Tower.
“Pudong was conceived with the centre of Pudong as a collection of iconic commercial towers,” Katz says. “I remember telling them they should continue the ground plan and improve how you get between the buildings. To the credit of the people that run and own Pudong, they understand that now. They’re trying to improve the pedestrian flow.”
Modern city planning would recommend creating a type of ‘zonal living’, where people with similar interests and habits live around the daily necessities (both work and recreational) that they incorporate into their life.
“Hong Kong and Manhattan and Tokyo are very good models because they focus on density,” Katz says. When cities without a solid core sprawl “it overloads the city and the infrastructure”.
In Manhattan, buildings with both restaurants and offices now command higher prices than buildings that are strictly offices. In many cities, parents choose to live near good education facilities, but a lot of single people don’t necessarily need that kind of access.
But one thing is for sure – the modern workplace and modern life are changing. Many more women work, and for a longer part of their lives. The boundaries between work and play that people used to draw are becoming vague. Working hours are often more flexible, and for knowledge workers, the idea of a specific workplace has become old-fashioned – certain professionals can do their jobs anywhere, whether it’s a low-rise office, high-rise multi-use building, a house, hunting lodge or hermitage.
Public recreational spaces are increasingly important in bringing people together, an area that Asian planners need to recognise. Katz says that financial-services tenants may now enjoy being located near entertainment facilities or commercial services, rather than just in a financial district. The presence of office workers as well as residents in a mixed-use neighbourhood makes it feasible for retail shops and restaurants to stay open longer.
“One of the things that people love about New York is that, like the song [says], it never goes to sleep – your day is not defined by the hours of operation of anything,” Katz notes.
Asian cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai are heading in that direction. They are increasingly cosmopolitan and adjusting to the 24-hour cycle of modern life, rather than the old nine-to-five style.
“In Hong Kong, people’s lifestyles have changed substantially in the last 20 years, and they are now much more similar with New York and Tokyo,” says Katz. “Hong Kong used to shut down, and the hours of operation of offices used to be more traditional. Restaurants, while they were vibrant, didn’t have business hours that extend as long as they do now.”
Super-tall buildings are one way of incorporating all those elements. Asia has the chance to be at the forefront of the more varied way that a city can develop. “The idea of a mixed-use building is particularly appropriate to a lot of people,” Katz says. “But there’s no one solution to everyone’s needs. Buildings aren’t like iPods or iPhones, there has to be a fair degree of choice.”
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