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More from: The Interlace in Singapore by OMA/Ole ScheerenIn 1980, Shenzhen in Guangdong Province became the first Special Economic Zone in China … and so began one of the most explosive urban experiments in human history. It was here that Deng Xiaoping began his famous southern tour of 1992, introducing the economic reforms that would transform the region and the nation. The new city of Shenzhen further benefited from the proximity to Hong Kong at the time of its transfer of sovereignty, which turned the faint whiff of capitalism into a pungent opiate. Deng’s dictum of ‘one country, two systems’ welcomed the incorporation of capitalism alongside state socialism. From nothing (or a series of villages housing 30,000 people), Shenzhen now has a population of 14 million, reflecting an average annual population growth of 30 per cent over the last three decades. This was economic growth and urban expansion in a dialectical relationship: economic liberalisation created the productive engine for the city’s growth, but urbanisation was the necessary precursor to profitable development.

A strident statue of Deng has long floated above the city as a reminder of his economic legacy. Now, a similar sculptural tribute to the power of money has been completed in the shape of OMA’s new Stock Exchange. The concept of capitalist flotation is given a literal representation in the simple conceit of taking the ground floor area of a traditional podium-tower configuration and raising it 36 metres into the air. By so doing, the site plan is liberated and the largest floor plate elevated. Jabsco Marine Toilet How To UseIn some ways, this novel idea offers so much potential that it is a wonder that it hasn’t been used more often in the past.Siberian Cat For Sale In Toronto OMA certainly think that they have hit on something big. Toilet Bowl Overflowing Dream

Their press release states that this design defies ‘an architectural convention that has survived millennia into modernity: a solid building standing on a solid base’. After such immodesty it seems churlish to note that the structural complexity and cost of this type of construction are clear limitations on this form becoming a commonplace typology. That said, at the time of my visit, a bland office tower across the street was adjusting its design midway through its construction, welding large steel cantilevers in order to pilfer the appearance from its neighbouring starchitecture. Looking on the positive side of this blatant plagiarism, OMA’s associate in charge of the project, Michael Kokora, told me that ‘it is good to see the influence that our building is having’. His teeth seemed particularly gritted. By raising the plinth, 40,000sqm of public space has been opened up. However, the idea of public space in China is a difficult concept because there is no civil society in any meaningful sense.

Admittedly, it is common to see people gathering to dance, play mahjong or simply to take exercise, but there is a strangely individualised content to the congregational form. Space is often organised formalistically, rather than as a result of social analysis or urban design considerations, with percentages of land allocated to green space, for example, regardless of the context. So the fact that many people come together in these spaces, recreationally or ritualistically, is often a fortunate consequence resulting from a technocratic planning exercise. Only time will tell whether the space under the canopy will be used in a manner suggested by the architect’s plans, but it is a brave decision to even consider general public use of the area immediately next to such a sensitive building. But this is China; here the risks are analysed for their cost benefits. As Song Liping, president of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange said recently: ‘Innovation is an important driving force for economic restructuring.’

On a main axis along Shennan Road, Shenzhen’s main artery, the Stock Exchange building is a significant urban intervention, but in the wider cacophony of mega-city scale Shenzhen, novelty is not enough. In fact, of late, Koolhaas seems to be busying himself with tower forms and his next Shenzhen commission at Essence Financial Building has also been framed as a challenge to convention. So is Koolhaas merely form-making or ground-breaking? Whatever the answer, this particular Stock Exchange building remains creditworthy primarily because of its simplicity and restraint in the face of audacious GDP growth and fiscal confidence. Detail of the cantilevered volume The building, conceived in 2006 and completed in September this year, comprises a 46-storey (254m) tower on a 4.5 hectares site. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange contains offices, research areas, training facilities, an exhibition and convention centre, a virtual trading floor and all the other unfathomable stuff of stock exchanges.

It contains its own gigantic computer server in the basement, because it was felt that the nanoseconds saved by not connecting to a remote server, would minimise global financial consequences. For all the high security, the tower is mixed use, incorporating the secretive financial side as well as exclusive residential apartments, each accessed from opposite sides of the building. A ceremonial entrance stairway from the south brings dignitaries straight into the central area of the building, but for everyday use, the staff enter from the east and residents from the west, both through huge glazed lobbies on the ground floor. These atria are solely designed as entrance volumes with security checks that connect the exterior directly with the central core. So the ground floor has a bigger footprint than the tower core, but seems quite soulless.The 160 x 100m floating podium is connected to the tower as a composite whole. Transfer trusses that extend for the full depth of the podium act with the concrete slabs to ensure that in-plane forces are suitably contained.

Temporary props were only removed from the perimeter of the cantilever after sufficient height (hence weight) of the tower had been constructed to minimise deflections. On the top of the floating podium is the green roof, designed by Inside Outside, which is one of the key features described by OMA’s roof plans. Unfortunately, this is where the project is let down; by landscaping that is understated to the point of parsimony and over-claimed to the point of embarrassment. China is rightly renowned for its historic gardens, and Shenzhen is no exception with generous parks and green spaces throughout the city, but the new ground-floor landscaping comprises meagre patches of grass scattered in a sea of paving, while the roof garden is a parody of Chinese decorative style. It is, say the architects, a representation of a Chinese paper cut, thus being ‘a fusion of Eastern and Western culture’. Sometimes cultural ingratiation leads to sycophancy rather than harmoniousness and when a building of this importance includes flower beds shaped like flowers, layouts shaped like leaves, then my heart sinks.

So, the landscaping doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but how does the actual building stand up? First of all, massive angled steel structural members take the main loads. These 32mm thick SHS steel members − approximately 2m x 2m in box section − are clearly visible on the outer walls; but the more delicate glazed atrium walls also provide vertical and lateral support for the cantilevers. This interplay between structure that is expressed and structure that is hidden, creates a good balance and enables the building to appear lighter than it otherwise might. The trick involves encasing the concrete atrium columns within a fritted glass skin. Behind these pillars of laminated glass are the real columns, cables, services and LED lighting that can only be seen in blurred close up. As a consequence, the patterned glass seems to shroud the building in a mist of light − diffused light from outside permeates the massive atria by day; while smudged artificial light emanates from the exterior surface of the building at night.

This cladding gives the whole structure the appearance of lightness and translucency: and it allows people to see only shadowy activities within. For the client’s auditors, it also cost less than ‘traditional’ aluminium or stone cladding. Indeed, throughout the entire building, a relatively small palette of materials has been efficiently specified in what appears like a well-designed conclusion to a value-engineering exercise. Many of the floors − including the ground floor entrance atria − are finished in sanded aluminium sheet which looks like a pre-carpeted raised floor system, but is actually the finished floor. Even though it has been tried and tested in Chicago’s IIT campus building, it still seems an unexpectedly ascetic choice. Similarly, along the main walls in the lobby, as well as the upper-storey dining club and several upper-storey corridors, sanded aluminium wall panels (very neatly arrised) vie with decorous Corian strips ‘grouted’ with gold leaf.