Urbanus, an architecture and design firm with offices in Shenzhen and Beijing, first made a name for itself designing public open spaces; some of its earliest commissions in the late 1990s were for squares, plazas and parks, mostly in Shenzhen. Today, the firm has assembled an impressive list of completed buildings, including the Dafen Art Museum (which also won a BusinessWeek/Architectural Record China Award this year) and the Shenzhen Planning Building (which won two years ago). On occasion, the firm’s partners also turn their attention to shaping the indoor environment, applying the same design skills they use on urban and architectural commissions.
For Vanke, one of China’s largest real-estate developers, Urbanus designed a dynamic showcase for new projects inside the east exhibition hall of the company’s architecture research center in Shenzhen. With high design becoming an increasingly integral part of Vanke’s brand and business model, the company wanted a place to show off the innovative architecture of its latest properties and the work of its research group. Urbanus responded to the client’s brief by creating a curvaceous, three-story exhibition structure, essentially a building within the existing building. The sculptural form and its insertion within a large atrium space recall Frank Gehry’s work at DG Bank in Berlin.
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