Winning Design for China Octagonal Supertall Announced

Büro Ole Scheeren has won an international design competition to build the 350-m Nanjing Jiangbei New Financial Center Tower in China, Arch Daily reports. The octagonal-silhouette skyscraper merges local tradition and culture within a mixed-use structure, aiming to become an iconic symbol of Nanjing’s new urban identity. The firm’s winning design, dubbed the Nanjing Nexus, was chosen for acknowledging the city’s futuristic visions and relationship between local culture, landscape and the Yangze River. The building’s octagonal form offers tenants efficient floor plans and clearly structured programming. Office spaces are zoned into four standardized rectangular work clusters, complemented with four diagonally rotated interactive innovation bays. At the top of the tower, a hotel offers panoramic views, as well as a roof terrace with a pool deck, a restaurant and gardens. Vertical gardens across the urban windows provide a contemporary interpretation of the garden culture and pavilions of Jiangsu province. The concave surfaces optimize the building’s solar performance, reduce structural wind loads and reflect light in reminiscence of Yangtze River’s waves and ripples.