This website no longer supports Internet Explorer 7 or below. Please update your browser.

Beijing Wanhao Century Center

Beijing Wanhao Century Center
Beijing
China

With its rapid transformation into a 21st Century world city, Beijing faces extraordinary challenges and opportunities. The Wanhao Century Center offers the opportunity to demonstrate how contemporary architecture can meet this unique set of conditions, while bringing exceptional value and prestige to an important new project. With its very auspicious location in the city, Wanhao Century Center can become a fulcrum, a turning point between the past and future, between the grand scale of the Capitol City and the unique diplomatic districts on either side of the site, setting an important example for new development in Beijing.

The massing of the Century Center's architecture creates a clear distinction between the verticality of the office towers and the horizontal proportions of the hotel. On the hotel horizontal bay windows and a strong division of base, middle, and top floors help to express the different parts of the complex program, and keep the horizontal texture of the facades. The office towers are boldly formed with a base shaft of stone and glass bands, from which large vertical volumes of metal frame and glass are suspended and appear to move up towards the sky. Both the buildings and the landscape play straight-line geometries against soft curves. This formal yin-yang concept is grandly declared by the office tower, with its nearly-symmetrical curved volumes of glass giving the towers a memorable profile.


Associate Architect: Yang Architects