GUONSEN SECURITIES TOWER

Sara Ferrara

The Central Business District of Shenzen recently adopted a model for its urban space in keeping with the times, making it vertical, dynamic, interconnected, and organized cohesively with the surrounding landscape. The Fuksas studio, winner of the international competition for the Guosen Securities headquarters, set itself the challenge of turning a tower into a complex three-dimensional body, using openings, hollows, and grooves in the glass volume of the canonical skyscraper.
The envelope’s configuration immediately declares this design intent with a deep mark — a void — that connects the interior spaces from the building’s base to its peak. 
Behind the cladding’s material homogeneity, the series of connecting spaces follows not only horizontal lines; along the snaking void — which proceeds like a vascular channel about 200 m high — are public spaces, the lobby, and sky gardens that connect in several strategic points, breaking up the floors and multiplying views; on one side is the city past the facade, and on the other, functional wings connected through gaps, transparencies, and flows of light. The Guosen Tower combines green space and public squares in a 21st-century multi-story building type, using its verticality — the favored direction of expansion in large cities — as a point of strength. to connect the inside and the outside and the retail businesses in the podium to the offices on the top.