Fuyang Ying River East

The business area includes an iconic super high-rise building with a height of 180 meters as well as low-rise commercial streets for continental European style shopping.
The relationship between Anhui Province and the German State of Lower Saxony are a foundation for tourism and for the transfer of technology and tradition in beer brewing and other related businesses. German-style Biergartens are placed along the river bank providing an authentic atmosphere of German leisure culture.

The location of the plot offers splendid views towards the river delta and the city centre directly behind. In order to take advantage of the views and the location along the river, revitalizing the waterfront and creating reasonably sized commercial facilities is decisive for the success of the project. Three main design principles have been traced:
Maximized view connections, attractive work spaces & leisure activities, and a public Waterfront Promenade.

A continuous circuit linking the main commercial areas at strategic points supports the development to become a vivid, active area with diverse functions.
Located straight in the axis of the delta, the office and hotel towers rotate their direction, thus emphasizing the views towards the delta. The towers are designed to create a choreographic three-dimensional silhouette along the river. At the same time they are facing the green island towards the south, providing visual connections and welcoming the traffic crossing the bridge.
Creating a commercial podium at several levels is a strategy to expand the views to the delta. Directing the commercial area towards the centre and entering from the main access points, leads people in and contains the flow inside. It helps creating an important core for business and commerce.

The residential area comprises high-end apartments with best views towards the Ying River and the city center beyond. The residential buildings have two orientations to optimize both the views towards the river and the sun exposure. Different angles between the buildings avoid blocking the views.

Qinhuangdao HSR Station district

By adding contemporary and green architecture and by inventing and developing a convenient infrastructure for vehicles and pedestrians to cross from one side of the station to the other without interference.
The urban expansion around the station will be seen as proof of a tolerant, modern and smart city, adding both mature and charming features to the city image.

RhineScheme’s task was to design the non-residential areas only.
The northern intervention site occupies a total area of 9.3 ha; the smaller south site has 3.4 ha.
The functions inside the southern area interact as a small town, with a five star hotel, office towers and commercial street, where people have a pleasant stay, workplaces and shopping facilities directly connected to the HSR train station. The uses are organized around a series of interconnected plazas forming a semi-circle with focus on the train station.

The northern areas welcome the passengers with a pair of super high-rise towers, both 205 meters tall. These twin towers create an iconic landmark in the new city skyline.
The further north is marked by mainly residential areas, where low-rise commercial streets along the Central Avenue and the avenue surrounding the train station offer convenient shopping and leisure facilities.

BMW,MINI,Rolls Royce | Show, sales & service centres

To support the architectural design, RhineScheme Beijing office has become planning partner of ‘BMW Brilliance Building Design Consultancy Team for Dealer Development’, located in Beijing, since February 2012.
The tasks include Schematic Building Design on various project types and checking of construction documents and interior design documents by local design institutes. Since 2012, RhineScheme has accomplished more than 130 design projects.
Almost 50% of the buildings are newly constructed, whereas the others are extension, upgrade or renovation projects.
The geographical focus of RhineScheme’s engagement for BMW is in the Central East of China with the Yangtze River Delta in its middle, and in the North-Eastern Provinces surrounding the Bohai Bay.

Corporate Culture requires that every building in which one can experience, buy or repair BMW cars is easy recognizable as a building from the same company. Similar principles apply to the brands of MINI and Rolls Royce.
The exterior appearance of BMW follows classical modern principles, with white or grey façade panels, white plaster for secondary parts, with large-scale glazing for the public areas hold by dark window frames, with sun-shading elements and with emphasis on horizontal lines in general.
Light colours are also dominating the interior spaces, although more private and intimate areas can very well be kept in rather dark elegance. Preferred materials are tiles in several grey tones, partly also in sand colour, and wooden flooring or other timber elements in natural colours.
Lighting channels and partition walls, open staircases and communication images all follow BMW’s CI, as does the street-like arrangement of the exhibited cars, the layout of sales areas and work-bases, integrated lounges and special new car delivery areas. Strongly brand-oriented spaces with a modern, airy and bright appearance are created.

Changchun 1948

Seeing the industrial heritage of the past as a chance to form attractive, creative, innovative spaces, is still not much developed in China. Singular and successful attempts in the biggest cities, Shanghai and Beijing, are exceptions. In Changchun, RhineScheme made a variety of proposals in the form of feasibility studies and business/usage concepts of how to keep and integrate a suitable amount of the old factory halls and revive them with new functions.

Some of the iconic factory buildings as well as typical, unique, sometimes peculiar industrial relics of the past have been seamlessly integrated. A number of fascinating artefacts found in situ have been transformed into artistic sculptures. In the same way landscape elements – mainly the immense rows of big trees having grown on the plot for over 60 years – could be preserved and become part of the new ‘commercial landscape’. Even if a complete conservation of the old building structures was not always possible, brick materials have been re-used extensively in facades and pavements, and great efforts have been made in reshaping buildings that resemble the local findings.

This exceptional commercial area is tailored to local culture and conditions and also to Changchun’s specific urban planning history with Russian influence.
The project is an outstanding case study and one of the early examples in China transforming an abandoned industrial site into a successful mixed-use area. Especially in the evening and night hours ‘Changchun 1948’ unfolds a special charm and magic atmosphere.

Quelle Complex Nuremberg

The “Quelle mail-order machine” with its approximately 250,000 m² usable area is probably the most consistent realization of a perfected logistic concept. To this day, the building impresses with monumentality and lightness.
After the insolvency of Quelle Group in 2009, 82 years after its founding, all conveyor systems were dismantled; the former function is barely visible in the building today.

In 2015, the hammer of the auctioneer fell in the foreclosure sale of the Quelle Shipping Center at 16.8 million Euros for the Portuguese real estate developer Sonae Sierra, who would like to rebuild the area.
RhineScheme’s German partner practice ksg, who developed a usage concept for the Quelle building, is also involved in the further planning. The future complex is intended to offer a mix of shopping, commercial, sports and community facilities.

Taiyuan South Station | Front Buildings

Foremost aim of this architectural and landscape proposal has been to create an architectural landmark that solves all functional aspects and serves the citizens, strong enough to be an adequate counterpart to the monstrous station building.

A whole string of hybrid buildings is lined up in front of the station, offering a very urban mix of uses and a (semi-)public interior atmosphere along a sequence of functions. Pedestrians can walk through the cluster and pass by shopping-malls and retailers, restaurants, cafés and tea houses, service and cultural facilities, exhibition and show rooms, hotel lobbies and such of business apartments and offices. A system of pedestrian paths is crossing and interconnecting the buildings and the main plaza, making it a permeable connection from the city to the station, equipped with open green spaces for the public and for the users of the buildings.
The overall idea is to form a ‘window to the city’, by the buildings’ architectural shape, by their function and in their façade design. A building volume forming the elements ‘frame and window’ is floating above a two-storey podium with a variety of uses for the public. The ‘windows’ – more or less transparent – will enhance the visibility and interaction between plaza activities and interior universe of each building. Moreover, these ‘windows’ can be used as multimedia screens serving for information, entertainment, and public events. They will indicate significant locations for public urban activities and welcome guests and visitors.

The railway station itself is focus and starting point of future development, with its plazas facing the south-western and north-eastern urban areas as linkage and connection. Both plazas serve as entrance to the city and functional hub for several traffic systems, but with different characters.
The squares will be vitalized by an attractive use of the encompassing buildings, and by their sophisticated landscape. Around the (Western) Main Square a sequence of smaller plazas and landscape features will be implemented to interact with various traffic elements, like subway access, bus terminal, taxi stand, car parking, ‘kiss & ride’, etc. The entity of squares is serving as forum and platform for numerous urban functions and activities, emphasizing the stay qualities along with the function as traffic hub.
The linear structures of the plazas are anchoring the Railway Station as their central element. A water axis is the connecting element between the two plazas. As ‘slow lane’ with rather calm character it is contrasting the ‘fast lane’ for traffic affairs. Tree groves serve as spatial structure and frame setting to create proportionate and human-scale spaces. Finally, a sequence of green spots and pocket parks are implemented as rest areas during the day, supported by an adequate lighting concept at night.

‘IN-Beijing’ sales & club building

The overall building shape is reduced and simple.
The generously glazed sales area is organized in the ground floor. Its glass facades are covered by metal posts, extending the building as 3-dimensional frames into the open space, and generating splendid light effects by interlacing sunrays and shadows.

The sample apartments are located in the second floor. Two volumes of different height and width are marking the 2 single-level and the 3 double-height (loft-type) sample apartments. The volumes are wrapped by metal panels – the bigger one in golden, the smaller in silver colour, like two surrealistic space ships floating in the air.

The landscape concept takes its inspiration from some of Paul Klee’s paintings. Plantings and paving are arranged in a geometric way by parallel stripes that are perpendicular to the broad main road, leading the way from the public road to the building. Each stripe is made of a different material or element – like water, timber, sand, gravel, stone of different colours, grass, shrubs, flowers etc. Next to the building, these stripes and materials become flat, solid and more precious.

Yizhuang Science & Technology Center

In this context, the Science & Technology Center (STC) is dedicated to be Yizhuang’s window of development and planning: a contemporary building for the public, serving as demonstration platform for hi-tech industries and products, and as service centre for the local companies: a space for exhibition, meeting and exchange.
The building occupies the most privileged location within the public ‘International Enterprise Cultural Park’: next to a lake, in the main entrance axis and surrounded by a belt of large trees. The building’s connection with nature is utmost important; to this intent the exhibition areas are closely interconnected with their surroundings as part of a quasi-osmotic building.
The exhibition space is introversion and extension of the park at the same time: paths with flowers let the indoor space grow into the surrounding nature.

The building is aimed to be green and sustainable in order to conform to its purpose and context. The main idea consists in lifting a piece of the park and putting an exhibition space underneath. A living blanket of vegetation is created that covers a service space for the public – symbolizing the least possible intervention into nature. Yizhuang STC is planned with two objectives: one of social nature, aimed to generate activities, and one of environmental nature, being a modern interpretation-concretization of a forest as complex biotope.
Visitors who see the mysterious floating object from a distance will be attracted to it. Approaching the building, they will enter an open exhibition hall with a semi-transparent wooden skin in a flowing motion, an illusionary, ephemeral structure where functional spaces like conference rooms, offices and other services are hanging from a green roof. This green roof becomes part of the landscape of the ‘Enterprise Park’.

The distribution of functions is simple and flexible: The ground floor is reserved entirely for the exhibition space as the heart of STC. It forms a flexible open space that can easily adapt to future changing needs. Without clear boundaries, it can also easily be extended into the park. 3 different kinds of spaces – uncovered, covered, and indoor spaces – create a variety of possible exhibition arrangements.
The second floor accommodates the remaining functions that need more specific and closed spaces: conference, education, offices. They are interconnected through a big lobby with cafeteria and view connections to the exhibition space. From the accessible roof visitors may finally overlook the park while walking through a small path.

Sustainability has been a key aspect of the design: The biggest portion of the consumed electricity will come from photovoltaic panels. The undulating roofline brings fresh air into exhibition and conference spaces by the wind streaming naturally through the 3-dimensional roof volume. Lighting for the central areas will come from daylight systems. Heating and cooling will be provided through geothermal energy and heat pumps. Waste-water will be cleaned biologically and re-used to a maximum.
Finally, wooden shutters of different densities will be installed in the façade, serving as sun protection, but also creating a vibrating interior atmosphere that reminds of the plays of light and shadow in a forest.

Lanzhou Int’l Trade Center

The planned International Trade Centre is located in the Western part of the city, where the new city centre will be developed.
It is directly located along the main city road connecting the Eastern and Western part and is surrounded by residential and commercial areas.The provincial Gansu Museum is located opposite of the plot, and on the plot itself the existing Friendship Hotel had to find its new and significantly increased location.

Apart from these institutions, both existing pedestrian shopping street (west of the plot) as well as a long-time established farmers’ market (in its North) is witnessing the dense urban atmosphere of the area.
The new program wants to even boost this density by adapting a floor area ratio of more than 5.5 and by adapting an attractive mix of functions, from residential, SOHO, office and large-scale shopping to the already mentioned new Friendship Hotel.

Although the required density would seem to suggest a pure high-rise development, the design respects the existing urban and building structure and continues the existing regular pattern of streets, small plazas and axes.

The shopping mall which occupies big part of the land area is divided into smaller volumes of varying height, creating a vivid roofscape partly as terraces for leisure facilities, partly as roof gardens which compensate for the green that is taken from the ground. The streets in-between widen up to smaller or bigger squares and provide green areas and sunken gardens.
In the northern part of the plot residential towers together with commercial podium buildings form two attractive green courtyards of intimate scale.
Finally, in the most representative south-east corner of the plot and close to the main road, the new Friendship Hotel Tower with its discreet architecture is perfectly visible from distance as a landmark of the plot.

Last not least the colouring of the façades refers to their particular location. One of the first things to notice in Lanzhou is its specific colours; the city is perfectly connected with its natural surrounding. All kinds of yellow, brown and light red are mixed together, reflecting the feeling of desert and the warm colours of the surrounding mountains. These unique colours are quoted in the planned facades and are fixed part of the architectural design.

(Functions: Residential & SOHO incl. ground floor commerce, partly office: 211,000 m² / Shopping mall: 118,000 m² / hotel incl. conference centre: 64,000 m² / underground shopping town: 42,000 m² / underground parking: 64,000 m².)

‘Society Hill’ sales & club building

The multi-functional building offers a variety of sports facilities: an indoor swimming-pool and gymnasium stacked on separate floors, fitness and aerobic rooms, as well as open air tennis courts on the rooftop.
Beside these concentrated sports facilities, the programme includes a foyer for meetings and exhibitions, a lounge with café, administration offices, as well as numerous technical facilities.
The facade is constructed from dark red, satin-finished and partially perforated Trespa panels distributed in a uniform way across all functional areas and allowing for direct or filtered views towards the outside.