Hotel & Residential
Shanghai IFC
+ expand detailShanghai, China
3.3 million square feet / 310,000 square meters
2011
Shanghai IFC is one of the most significant new developments in the Pudong New Area, China’s most important financial and commercial center. The project — three towers, a shopping mall and a public plaza — are a central element of Pudong’s skyline, joining landmarks like the Oriental Pearl Tower in the view from the Bund, Shanghai’s historic riverfront promenade. The development is home to a multitude of international businesses, symbolizing China’s remarkable commercial growth.
The project includes two mixed-use towers, 48 and 50 stories, each with approximately 139,000 square meters (1.5 million feet) of floor area for office and hotel use. The China headquarters of HSBC occupies more than half of the south tower, which will also include a 290-room Ritz Carlton Hotel offering commanding views of the central city. A third tower, 23 stories tall, contains service apartments, complete banquet and conference facilities, a fitness center and swimming pool.
The towers share a common architectural language. Starting with elegant, rectilinear forms clad in a vertically-grained glass-and-steel curtain wall, the design team sculpted the towers by slicing off corners and edges, creating crystal-like towers that gesture toward one another, creating a single composition from two buildings. Where the towers are sliced away, a horizontally-grained interior is revealed, adding visual richness to the soaring forms. The two angled towers also respond to their varied urban surroundings — low-rise residential buildings to the south, a major roadway to the north, tall towers to the east, and new hotels and retail developments to the west.
A four-level podium houses approximately 55,000 square meters (592,000 square feet) of retail, restaurants and support spaces for the hotels. Below grade are an additional 1,500 square meters (16,000 square feet) of retail, a cinema complex, 1,800-space car park and connections to the subway. Pedestrian connections to the adjoining sites are conveniently provided by tunnels and sky bridges. The project’s ground plane is an urban park, extensively landscaped and punctuated with fountains, gardens, and sitting areas, and open courts that integrate with the below-grade retail level.
Rated LEED Gold, the buildings use low-e glass curtain wall for energy efficiency. Almost 80 percent of the office space receives natural light, further reducing energy consumption. In addition, nearly 75 percent of the construction waste was recycled.
