广州塔 - Guangzhou Tower - Canton Tower
Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit and their practice Information Based Architecture from Amsterdam, designed the Canton Tower while competing in an international invited competition. The competition was held in 2004. It asked for the design of the tower, a 17.9ha park at its base and the master-plan for the surrounding 56.6ha which includes an elevated Plaza, pagoda-park, retail facilities, offices, television centre and hotel.
In the competition for the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower we cooperated with Arup, initially their Amsterdam office, then later their offices in London, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Most of the other offices participating in the competition were large commercial practices with lots of high-rise experience - Cannon Design, KPF, Richard Rogers and Coop Himmelb(l)au, among others.
Sexy Complexity
While working on the competition, we wanted to offer the city, something simple but complex, a new form that would be in tune with the contemporary times and that would challenge the current building technologies.
Where most historical skyscrapers were bearing male characteristics; being angular, simplistic, heavy and based on repetition, we defined our tower to have the identity of a female; smooth, curved, slender, gracious and incorporating diversity of spaces and floor-plan sizes, in short a sexy tower.
The tower would be simple and complex at the same time, and would attempt to form a new and exciting coherence between structure and architectural effects.
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