PINGSHA COMMERCIAL AND COMMUNITY COMPLEX

Located at the heart of a large high-rise housing area, the complex is set to become a reference point for the community of Pingsha New Town. The concept merges public space with architecture, combining spaces for social life of the community on multiple interconnected levels. The result is “Community Cloud”, a multilevel mixed-use facility that integrates office, hospitality, commerce, neighborhood center, leisure and sport. Once completed, the project will be the largest vertical green facade in Zhuhai.

A Destination for the Community

The project is located in the coastal Eastern side of Pingsha District in Zhuhai, in a former countryside area that is facing a rapid development. Favored by its prominent position between two main traffic arteries and adjacent to a series of green parks to the North, the complex will become a reference point and a vibrant destination for the community of Pingsha New Town residential area.

A New Mixed-use Center

Unlike the common trend from a recent past where suburban areas were relying mostly on shopping centers to satisfy the demand of the community, Pingsha Community Cloud is a true mixed-use complex offering a variety of social and civic activities besides retail. Of the 44,950 m2, one fourth accounts for neighborhood center functions, one fourth for retail and F&B, one fourth for office and one fourth for hotel. The design offers a fully integrated platform for living, working and leisure where social interactions are encouraged at every level of the architecture.

Community Cloud: A Hyper-Connected Community

In computing language, a ‘cloud’ is a platform that allows a group of users to freely access and share resources. Here it becomes a public space where people of the community share their life together. The architecture’s stacking volumes allow multi-leveled large outdoor spaces, providing a straight-forward circulation and seamless transitions between functions.  Through a hyper-connected quality public space, the goal is to trigger social interactions among the visitors and improve their well-being.

Living Green

The quality public space requirements are combined in this project with request of maximizing the vertical green in façade in order to make the complex a benchmark for green buildings in the future development of Pingsha District. The subtropical climate conditions in Zhuhai are optimal for green façades, green roof and indoor green walls which can effortlessly grow a wide variety of low maintenance plants in these conditions Green walls can be made to blend with the architecture, but in Pingsha Commercial and Community Center, they become an outstanding centerpiece of the design.

The Green Heart of a Community

What could have easily become a conventional shopping mall ‘retail box’ and office towers, is instead an open and active destination for the nearby community. The diverse program and the hyper-connectivity of the public space break with the conventional segregation of programs and land-use in current Chinese planning. Spaces for shopping and eating supporting the office and hotel blocks, seamlessly blend with recreational and sports areas for the community. The human scale public space and the architecture are designed to encourage social interactions and create relationships, bringing different groups together in a mixed-use urban development that is the pulsating heart of a community.