AIA Hong Kong

Alibaba “A” Community Development by Andrew Bromberg Assoc. AIA

Winner: Andrew Bromberg Assoc. AIA

Award: Merit Award for Unbuilt / Other

The Alibaba “A” Community Mix project explores a highly integrated and overlapping mixed-use typology. It attempts to test the threshold of where individual programmes collide, overlap and even morph into interaction spaces with rich ambiguity. Located within a new technology core in the capital of Sichuan, China, the project serves as a modal development to the district. The project consists of office, corporate headquarters, showrooms, hotels residential, SOHO and retail uses.

The major components of the office and headquarters are positioned on the northern edge of the site relating to a major vehicular corridor with good frontage. The residential components are positioned on the southern side of the site toward less contextual density and satisfying required southern light exposure. The design then explores how to knit these elements together while maximizing opportunities for interaction.

Positioned between the formal business area in the north and the informal residential area in the south, an outdoor plaza named the ‘incubator’ is the heart of the proposed network of interactions. A canyon is formed from the mass of the different uses fronted by the northern sides of the residential towers. The Soho function, which has both residential and commercial relationships, is used to knit the residential towers and the incubator together and absorbing the canyon walls on the south. The retail component then becomes the civic glue typing the canyon together with the surrounding incubator to activate the plaza as a retail loop.

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