The multiphase expansion of China World Trade Center will enlarge and improve the retail arcade, now known as China World Mall, and re-establish the trade center as the city’s premier shopping destination. The expansion provides new luxury and mid-market retail and entertainment to complement and knit together the existing buildings and uses. This enables China World Trade Center to provide the latest in lifestyle, home, dining and entertainment choices. Connectivity drives the design for CWTC as various interconnected paths guide visitors around and through existing structures in the complex.
Since its opening in 1990, CWTC has been Beijing’s premier business address, defining the commercial core of the city with prime office space luxury hotels, exhibition halls and apartments. CWTC also introduced luxury retail to the Chinese market, attracting internationally renowned tenants including Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Hermes, and Bvlgari. Today, these tenants and many more are seeking the enhanced visibility that the new luxury retail flagship stores will provide.
The design addresses the changing context of the campus and Beijing as a city. With layered panels of translucent and transparent glass on patterned façades, the new retail addition will aim to respond to the new and contemporary needs taking place in and around the business district of Beijing.
An underdeveloped site adjacent to the existing underground China World Mall is the location for the second retail development, which will create a mix of tenants designed to attract a full range of shoppers. This piece will be raised up to street level and linked to the existing malls as a means of creating a cohesive, bright and contemporary campus.
Multiple venues connecting across the site share sleek modern forms and a palette of materials that includes distinctive, finned, metal panels backlit with colorful LED to continue the graphic affect at night. Large digital screens create an added layer of visual dimension and depth to the overall site. In its full form, the design introduces a streetscaping plan that delivers a retail energy to the outdoors with a series of connecting paths, landscape and hardscape elements.
