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Banking on the Future

An office tower symbolizes the transition of the country's third-largest bank toward a more open and technologically advanced marketplace.

By Larry Flynn, Senior Editor

March 1, 2004

Building Design and Construction

When a nation of 1.3 billion flexes its economic muscle, the result is a building boom of unprecedented proportions. Last year, China consumed half the world's concrete and one-fourth the steel, most of it for buildings and infrastructure.

Energized by the government's efforts to thrust the ancient culture into the 21^st century, the Chinese business community is looking to integrate Western business methods with its own, while at the same time adopting a more modern architectural style.

That is what executives at the government-owned China Construction Bank, the third-largest banking system in China, wanted to achieve with their new regional headquarters office in the coastal city of Xiamen, where the East and South China Seas meet.

After conducting an international design competition, the bank selected MulvannyG2 Architecture, Bellevue, Wash., to bring Western flavor and expertise to the project, which had an otherwise all-Chinese Building Team. With the completion of a 42-story office tower last September, the bank put its brand on the city's skyline. At 588 feet in height, the building is the tallest in Fujian Province; at night the bank's logo shines like a lighthouse beacon overlooking the ocean.

"It's our bank's branding," says Cai-yun Chen, the bank's director of engineering, who feels that the building not only stands out, but is "reflective of the largest bank system in the city," creating "a value that is measured by more than just money."

The curving, ocean-side exterior of the 42-story China Construction Bank recalls the movement of wind and wave and signals a new, modern, more open banking environment.

Rising from the waterfront, the 675,000-sf high-rise occupies a small 5,330-square-meter site, and is separated from the ocean by a main thoroughfare and a waterfront park. Although small to begin with, the bank site includes a plaza on the building's southwest side, which acts as an extension of the waterfront park.

Symbolizing a more open market

The building's exterior design respects both the ocean view and the city's history, while also making a statement about the future of banking in China. With ocean views on its south, west, and north sides, the broad, curving glass curtain wall façade along its southwest side and main entrance has double meaning. While "inspired by the movement of the waves and wind," says Ming Zhang, AIA, senior vice president and design partner in MulvannyG2's Los Angeles office, it is also symbolic of China's more open banking environment. "We tried to translate this transparency by opening the building up to western views."

On the base and northeast side of the building facing the city, solid granite, indicative of large rock formations that break through the ground along roadsides, is evocative of the bank's stability and power. The granite blends with the city's traditional brick and tile-roofed architecture. Being a coastal city, Xiamen has a tradition of being receptive to other cultures. "Shipping has had a major influence on the city," says Zhang. "Over the years, people have moved away and then returned, bringing Western influences back with them."

Higher-quality imported glass and granite were used on the building's four-story podium, which contains three levels of banking and customer service and an auditorium topped by a roof garden, but the bank opted for less-expensive domestic materials for the body of the tower.

Although the economy and customary use of concrete in China led to the choice of reinforced concrete instead of steel for the tower's structure, larger columns (1.4 meters at the base) and higher floor-to-floor heights (3.8 meters) created inefficiencies of space, says Zhang. With the strength of concrete in China (8,000 psi) half that of concrete in the U.S., Zhang says there is a big market in the country for higher-strength concrete.

More than simply modern looking, the building features intelligent automation and safety systems on a par with Class A office buildings in the U.S., says Zhang. Containing a centralized control system, broadband, and satellite, as well as a raised floor system for the building's data centers, all the mechanical/electrical and communications equipment is imported. The technology has made the building "much easier to manage than we expected," says Chen.

After an analysis showed that bank officials wanted a building that was too large for its use (400-500 sf per person), MulvannyG2 convinced bank officials to put up half the building's office space for lease, a rarity for large corporations in China, which prefer to be the sole occupant of their buildings. "Typically, you'd want your asset to make money," says Zhang. "But before, corporations, especially those owned by the state, didn't care."

The granite-clad side of the tower, which faces the city, symbolizes banking’s stability and blends with traditional brick and tile-roofed architecture.

The bank occupies the lower half of the tower and the top two floors, consisting of a banker's club, which includes a lounge, restaurant, game room, and exercise facilities. The upper floors are commercial office space, 20% of which is currently leased.

Bank officials may have one foot in the modern business world, but some traditions are slow to change. Unable to fully convince officials of the safety and reliability of the building's security technology, MulvannyG2 compromised with the bank on the need for a separate entrance and elevator bank for corporate executives. While employees and executives enter the building through the same lobby, each group has its own elevator banks.

Observance of the spiritual traditions of feng shui caused a functional change in the design of the building's east entrances, wherein the entrance was repositioned so that it was not directly opposite the west entrance. "Banks collect wealth," says Zhang, "and they didn't want it coming in one end and going out the other." Such are the adventures of working with clients of differing spiritual and cultural background.

Project Summary

China Construction Bank regional headquarters

Xiamen, China

Building Team

Owner/developer: China Construction Bank/Xiamen Jianshen Real Estate Development Co.

Design architect: MulvannyG2 Architecture

Project architect: Shanghai Architectural Design Institute

Interior architect: Oriental Interior Decorating Co.

Structural engineer: Shanghai Architectural Design Institute

Mechanical/electrical engineer: Shanghai Architectural Design Institute

General contractor: Bureua 3; China Construction Co.

General information

Area: 726,000 gross sf

Number of floors: 42

Construction time: February 1998 to September 2003

Construction cost: Withheld by owner

Delivery method: Design/bid/build

Project materials and suppliers

Structural system, decking: Reinforced concrete structure (exterior frame with interior core)

Curtain wall, cladding, panels: Shenyang YuanDa Curtainwall Co.

Exterior glazing: Shanghai Yaohua Glazing Co.

Stone: Xinjian GuanghuiStone Co. (tower); Italian Stone (podium)

Life safety/security systems: ABB

Elevators: Mitsubishi, Japan

Heating/refrigeration: Carrier

Energy management controls: Beijing Yingtai Co.

Power/communications duct, raceways, conduit: ABB

Lighting: Philips Lighting

Made in China

Embassy House, Beijing

Diplomats are the primary inhabitants of the Embassy House, a 32-story luxury apartment high-rise located in Beijing's Second Embassy District. Designed by the Hong Kong office of HOK, the building is modeled on the premise of a five-star hotel. Completed in 2002, the building features high-end finishes and such amenities as a library, residents' bar, deli/store, business center, fitness center, swimming pool, supervised children's play area, laundry service, and secured underground parking.

Developed by Houston-based Hines, the 48,248-sm building's design responds to the urban constraints of its location, which is bordered by a diagonal street, says Ernest Cirangle, design principal in HOK's Los Angeles office and head of the Hong Kong office during design of the building. Rotating some of the two- and three-bedroom units to a north-south grid created projections, similar to the prow of a boat, which provide better orientation to the sun and views, while giving the double-glazed glass curtain-wall building added character.

Highcliff apartments, Hong Kong

Constructed along a steep, rocky cliff overlooking central Hong Kong, the recently completed 73-story Highcliff apartment tower is, at 818 feet, one of the world's tallest residential buildings.

Designed by locally based Dennis Lau & Ng Chun Man Architects & Engineers, the double-ellipse-shaped tower is only 60 feet wide at its widest point. An innovative tuned liquid mass damping system, developed by Magnusson Klemencic, Seattle, protects the extremely slender tower from typhoon-level winds. Four passive and maintenance-free "sloshing" dampers use the momentum of a liquid mass to counteract building sway under even the windiest of conditions, ensuring occupant comfort. An advanced monitoring system, also developed by Magnusson Klemencic, provides real-time damper status and performance with data accessible from anywhere in the world. The tower also is anchored into the cliff using a composite concrete mat, bearing directly on sloping rock below.

U.S. Embassy, Beijing

Ground was broken last month on what is being called the largest project ever built on foreign soil by the U.S. State Department. The new U.S. Embassy, located in Beijing's Third Embassy District, is a 500,000-sf complex occupying a 10-acre block in the capital city's new northeast quadrant. When completed in 2008, more than 600 employees will work in the building. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's San Francisco office, the complex's series of low- to mid-rise buildings "reflect American values through contemporary, clear, direct, and open architecture," while its landscape respects the traditions of Chinese design and culture, according to SOM.

Tianjin Mall Town, Tianjin

Niles Bolton Associates, Atlanta, is providing master planning, architecture, and landscape architecture services to Tianjin Yong Tai Hong Kan Real Estate Development Co. for Tianjin Mall Town, an 800-acre community on the outer loop of Tianjin, China's fourth largest city (population: 10 million). The new community includes a 27-hole golf course, 2,500 housing units, a town center, a shopping center, and a community school. The town center consists of 86,000 sf of residential, retail, cultural, amusement, and recreational space, in the form of three five-story mixed-use buildings, pedestrian streets and plazas, a clock tower, and a civic auditorium. A 65,900-sf community center includes a six-lane indoor Olympic swimming pool, two indoor basketball courts, a 10-meter rock-climbing wall, an indoor golf practice facility, a library, a day spa, restaurants, and a greenhouse.