Takshing House Redevelopment
Winner: Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP
Award: Merit Award for Unbuilt Projects

The building replaces an existing dilapidated structure with a new workplace whose extraordinary spatial experience of light and views significantly improves the quality of the pedestrian urban experience. The highly constrained 953 sq m site is without height limits but is overshadowed by existing mid-rise context. The design recognizes constricted site and restricted floor plate dimensions to transform a potentially undistinguished infill building into a new paradigm for super dense urban high rise construction. Elevating the tower bulk above adjacent buildings activates a midblock passage with retail pavilions while exposing historic facades and providing greater daylight into a new urban space.

Office floors 90 m above grade are cantilevered off a central "tree trunk" core using tapered post-tensioned concrete girders. The resulting typical office floor is column-free to maximize flexibility and visibility. A double glazed wall with internal ventilation and motorized horizontal shades controls day lighting to the interiors. The "braided stream" concrete core carries all gravity loads, resists lateral forces, and matches material with the forces and stresses acting on the building. Eight floors of MEP and service spaces fill the void within.

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