Squares and Parks

Office Building Leatop Plaza, Guangzhou, China

2008 bis 2012

The objective of the design was to convey the impression that the building of the finance centre in Guangzhou, China, is connected with other financial hubs on the globe. A geometric grid of lines formed by flat steel strips covers the entire premises. The strips are engraved with the names of cities lying at the imaginary ends of the lines that resemble “individual meridians”.The pavement is structured by these lines, which run into the building and to the access drive. For the pavement, three different shades of grey were used. The green spaces are divided by a linear paving smoothly fading into the area of the public park north of the building. Paths cutting through the planting allow for quick and easy access to the northern park and to the buildings’ entrances. The trees flanking the premises in the east and the west (wild fig trees, ficus sp.) are lined neatly as if in a park. The Hong Kong Orchid Trees (Bauhinia blakeana Dunn) in the north and the south are arranged randomly throughout the planting zones. These native varieties visualise the change of seasons. The artistic approach of the connection of architecture and open space creates a new nucleus of urban space transformation in a fabric of regional change that is determined by global influences.