Hanking Center, an 1,180-foot-tall mixed-use complex with a commercial office tower and retail center, has completed in Shenzhen, China. The 65-story tower is currently the tallest detached-core building in the world.
The slender profile of the tower emerges above a low-rise retail podium that features angled facets, shadowing the form of the tower above. A series of glass sky bridges and steel mega-braces knit the offset core to the main body of the tower. At ground level, the Center is accessible by multiple entrances and is set within a landscaped public plaza, ensuring a permeable site that invites the public into the retail podium.
The tower’s steel structural system and detached-core configuration, which positions the tower’s primary core on the building’s exterior, promotes higher efficiency and adaptability of interior floor plates. This enhances the tower’s ability to service the varying needs of its occupants. The detached-core configuration also allows for an innovative approach to internal circulation and the creation of social and work spaces that integrate public and private domains. Two secondary cores in the body provide additional structural reinforcement and house mechanical services such as freight and VIP elevators.
By shifting the primary movement and service core outside the main body of the tower, the design minimizes the building’s structural footprint while maximizing open spaces inside the tower. The exoskeletal frame bends and straightens to expand and contract interior floor sizes.
The open floor plates allow for enhanced natural light and airflow. Tenants move from circulation around the core to quieter perimeter offices, creating a public to private gradient. Folded angles are used to merge public components in the podium with private commercial space in the tower. Inside the retail podium, a tapered atrium draws natural light down into the mall creating an inviting interior environment for the public. A grand plaza and dimensional hardscape surrounds the tower’s podium to create a new neighborhood landmark that enhances public activity at the street level.
The project completed in 2018 with a gradual opening that continued into 2021.
Related Stories
| 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.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit, Mich.
“From eyesore to icon.” That's how Reconstruction Awards judge K. Nam Shiu so concisely described the restoration effort that turned the decimated Book Cadillac Hotel into a modern hotel and condo development. The tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, the 32-story Renaissance Revival structure was revered as a jewel in the then-bustling Motor City.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Palmer House Hilton Hotel & Shops Chicago, Ill.
Chicago's Palmer House Hilton holds the record for the longest continuously operated hotel in North America. It was originally built in 1871 by Potter Palmer, one of America's first millionaire developers. When it was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire it became the first hotel in the U.S. to put a telephone in every room.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gulf Coast Hotel's Stormy Road to Recovery
After his initial tour of the dilapidated 1850s-era Battle House Hotel, Ron Blount, construction manager with Retirement Systems of Alabama, said to his boss: “You need a priest more than you need a contractor.” Those words were more prescient to RSA's restoration of the historic Mobile landmark than he could have known at the time.
| Aug 11, 2010
Lifestyle Hotel Trends Around the World
When the Rocco Forte Collection opens the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily in early 2009, the 200-room luxury property will be one of the world's newest lifestyle hotels. Lifestyle hotels cater to guests seeking a heightened travel experience, which they deliver by offering distinctive—some would say avant-garde, or even outrageous—architecture, room design, amenities, and en...
