Located in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) in the outer district of Tianjin, the Tianjin Chow Tai Fook Finance Centre, is a 530-meter mixed use tower. With a 389,980 sq.m GFA spanning 96 floors above ground and 4 floors below ground, it will have 81 elevators to provide access for the occupants. The tower will include 300 units of serviced apartments, and a 350-room five-star hotel.
Designed by US based architects SOM, the tower features strategically placed, multistory wind vents combined with the tower's aerodynamic shape reduce vortex shedding, which in turn dramatically minimizes wind forces.
Having already been recognized as the Best Chinese Futura Mega Project: Silver, by MIPIM Asia in 2015, the skyscraper is also been designed to LEED® Gold standards. Sustainable strategies include a high-performance envelope, optimized daylighting, and green landscaping.
WSP is serving as the MEP, Vertical Transport System, LEED and Fire Engineering consultant on this prestigious project and have introduced cutting-edge, energy-efficient systems to make this one of the most sustainable buildings in the region.
The most challenging aspect when designing the services for this tall building is the shape. Tianjin Chow Tai Fook Finance Centre is a very slender tower and by the time you reach the top, the whole building shrinks like a bowling pin. At the top levels, the floorplate is smaller than the lower floors with the core only around 19 sq.m. The upper floors lend themselves to hotel accommodation rather than offices, but the challenge is how to fit in the hotel lobby and the considerable vertical transportation requirements – at the point where the core is at its thinnest?
The solution was to locate the hotel lobby below the service apartments whilst the hotel is located on the upper floors. The core is shaped like two square tubes, one inside the other. The inner part of the core runs the full height of the building and contains all the building systems, local lift shafts and the fire escape stairs. The outer part of the core contains the shuttle elevators: The outer core stops at the hotel lobby level and the serviced apartments and hotel floors are served by the much smaller central core.
