The Tianjin Towers

Neville Mars, Sam, Dave, Julia

Chinese public buildings have the unfortunate quality of being particularly nonpublic. The combined commission of a museum and government building allowed us to blur these borders, allowing the exhibition to crawl up into the tower atrium and the offices seep down into the museum. Designed as a single integrated sustainable project, the height of the tower works as a naturally ventilating chimney. Underground the buildings are connected pulling air through the voids of the museum up into the tower.

Museum

TV Towers

Initially the request to make a landmark TV tower, without any preconditions seemed a dream assignment. A basic survey of the word’s existing TV masts revealed another reality. They all look identical, and for good reason. The sole objective is to achieve height with minimum structural effort - i.e. cost. This reduces them to a basic hollow core with a protrusion as a viewing deck and restaurant at roughly at 3/5 of the height. The three proposals effectively break with this tradition while maintaining the inherit structural logic.

Tianjin Planning Exhibition Hall

Neville Mars, Dave Harlander, Yue Hongdan

The Chinese press has compared this plan to Ronchamp. In reality the somewhat organic shape was the result of a number of distinctly rational choices. The exhibition hall will accommodate(present) the proposals for the area of Yujiapu District. We have developed a projection system that when standing in front of the tilted facade the mirrored projections seem to float outside, right on top of their intended sites. To minimize energy use for construction of the district, mountains of excavated soil from the city’s foundations begin to grow against the sides of the building. As the district grows so does the exhibition hall.

Exhibition Hall Movie.mov

virtual projection system