Ascendas Plaza Renovation: A New Benchmark for Urban Renewal

Aico's Innovative Design Transforms Shanghai's Urban Landscape

The project, located in the bustling Xuhui District, took advantage of the area's rich commercial and landscape resources. The design team sought to break the boundary between the building and the city, creating a dialogue between the two. The result is a highly integrated space where office and commercial areas coexist, and indoor and outdoor creative spaces are shared at multiple levels. The building's facade has been designed to enhance the spatial quality of the region, making it a new spotlight in the city center.

Aico's design approach was to overlay corporate workplace, co-working space, and retail with a community-inspired experience. This resulted in a unified and distinct design language - a sequence of unique and characteristic spaces that encourage social interaction. The design team created a dialogue between the building and the urban environment, and the elaborate facade improves the aesthetics of the district.

The design team decided on the form of the facade according to the function of the space. The exquisite and orderly frame curtain wall constructs a modern office block, while the transparent and concise glass rib curtain wall creates a new shared office space. This not only introduces landscape resources on both sides of the road into the building but also enables the deeper space inside the building to enjoy the urban green corridor.

The project's technical specifications reveal a focus on glass curtain walls. The two-story lobby at the office entrance and the facade of the co-working area adopt transparent and concise glass ribs to break the boundary between the street landscape and the interior of the building. A series of vertical setbacks are created as a distinctive facade feature. In the middle of the podium, mirror stainless steel material is adopted to reflect the urban green corridor, enriching the details of the facade.

The Ascendas Plaza renovation project started in October 2017 and was completed in November 2019. The project has set a new benchmark for Shanghai's urban renewal projects, demonstrating how innovative design can transform the function of a space without changing the original building structure. The project has been recognized with a Silver A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award in 2021, a testament to its outstanding expertise and innovation.