Hovering Kan-Too – Great Bay Area Centre Showroom
Wutopia Lab, ArchUnits Chief Architect: YU Ting
Location: Ma’an Island, Zhongshan, Guangdong, China
Status: Completed

The translucent Great Bay Area Showroom, known as the “Hovering Kan-Too” designed by Wutopia Lab, the door to the future of Vanke-Shum Yip, was completed and opened in July 2022. Located at the west bank of the Pearl River Delta, and the west gate of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, it is in the front-line coastal area of the Great Bay Area. Standing on the roof on sunny days, one can have a view of the spectacular building cluster on the other side of the sea in Qianhai, Shenzhen. The ambitious showroom is a new landmark of the new city floating on the sea. The showroom, assuming the role of building selling represents the only persistence on architecture held by real estate developers having pursuits in an increasingly competitive market.

The architect had a radical idea. He built a black BDO reflecting the surroundings: Big Dumb Object. It symbolizes the great power of the unknown and the mysterious. What it presents is a simple, pure, and distinct image, rather than maximalism or human-made tricks. It is a huge, silent, and cool object that attracts the attention of all directions of the site, being a hot topic on the network.

The form of the showroom is based on a diamond-shaped site. The geometric column is generated and then becomes a simple, pure, and distinct image after a few simple cuts that simulate the changing contour lines of a mountain range. A two-and-a-half-story building is designed to be 21 meters high, which is the upper limit of low-rising buildings.

For this project, the architect chose PTFE as the main material with different porosities of 28% and 50% to achieve a translucent effect. The reason for choosing PTFE is that the material provides the porosity required to meet the fire-fighting ventilation requirements, which allows architects to create an ambiguous climate cavity between the real building boundary and the membrane. The meeting rooms, reception rooms and exhibition halls are designed as freestanding houses with pitched roofs, arranged around the atrium in an uneven and natural way. With the structural-based overhang and the sense of openness of the public space on the first floor, minimizing contact with the ground on the first floor was achieved.

The roof is painted with a dazzling orange colour, while the first floor was also painted the same orange, except for the ground. The dark brown ground and the outdoor ground are connected to one another. The red mountain seems to be coming off the ground and flying. The mountain, covered with translucent white PTFE, also shines in the late afternoon sunlight. Viewing from the street, the white shape goes up and down. However, as the viewing angle moves, the orange-red color occasionally emerges from the gaps between the peaks, which is really fascinating.

more. www.wutopialab.com