Deep Blue, as a new incubator office building, is located in the Zijingang Science and Technology City of Hangzhou Chengxi Sci-tech Innovation Corridor. The designer takes the user needs as the driving force, combines the site environment, and sends invitations to people with the minimalist space design language: this is not only a pure office space but also an open, inclusive and diversified cultural place, which bears multiple possibilities such as social interaction, entertainment, life, and learning.
The project site is relatively square, with a quiet river on the west side and office buildings of different types and heights on three sides. To realize the X-shaped building form effect, the structure has the challenge of a huge cantilever of 29.4m: A number of seismic overruns belong to special irregular structures. After many discussions, the design team adopted a hybrid structural system of steel frame+center support-steel plate composite shear wall/steel reinforced concrete shear wall, and the steel truss with diagonal bracing was employed for the cantilever part, finally realizing the envisaged architectural form. For environmental protection and cost consideration, in the structural design of the secondary commission, while ensuring safety, the original pile foundation should be used rationally as far as possible, and the original basement floor structure should be utilized after demolition.
To make the best use of natural lighting, ventilation, and landscape greening, after analyzing the urban space and the streamlining of the site, the architectural form is cut three times diagonally according to the diagonal of the square (northeast-southwest): the oblique section of the main entrance at the northeast corner, the oblique section of the upper set-back terrace at the southwest, and the oblique section of the gray space that runs through the internal atrium and river landscape at the lower layer. The pure geometric cutting enables the building to better integrate with the whole city interface, while the X-shaped converging facade maintains the independent character of the new office building.
The designer carefully observed the sunshine of the site in different periods in the early investigation, and also took into account the dominant wind direction of the monsoon in summer and winter in Hangzhou. In terms of environmental sustainability, the upper and lower sets of openings at the southwest corner significantly enhanced the natural ventilation effect of the inner courtyard of the building, which improves comfort while ensuring energy conservation and environmental protection.