After the success of Heatherwick Studio’s UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo they were invited to design a new multifunctional commercial and entertainment complex in Shanghai’s art district M50. The studio’s main aim was to relate to the park and art district, and at the same time realize a dense development.
The density of the structure required 800 columns to support it and this started an exploration into an expressive usage of these columns. The studio developed the idea to create a tree-covered mountain, using the tops of the columns as planters for a thousand trees. Heatherwick arranged the columns in an orthogonal fashion sloping down towards the art district and the park.
Thomas Heatherwick explains: “We took our clues from the scale of the old buildings next door and became interested in how to break down the visual feeling of our singular huge development into an accumulative of smaller elements. Our hope is that 1000 Trees will be a transformative piece of topography and when you zoom in, it will reveal a multitude of human scale places, framing the lives of people that live and work here.”
More from the Architects:
Located in a residential area 20 minutes from central Shanghai, 1000 Trees is a mixed use development spanning 300,000 square metres.
The 15 acre site is located next to the M50 arts district and a public park. The development is split over two plots of land connected by a narrow government plot and incorporates several historic buildings.
Designed by Heatherwick Studio for the developer Tian An China, 1000 Trees is conceived not only as a building but as a piece of topography and takes the form of two tree-covered mountains, populated by hundreds of columns.
Rather than hiding the columns which provide structural support, the columns emerge at the top of the building as large planters, each holding a handful of trees.
Existing planning permission for two conventional shopping mall blocks had been granted for the site, but a huge, boxy building would need to be broken into smaller pieces in order to fit in with the surroundings.
The integrated planting acts as a natural balancing element and the building’s edges are lowered to minimise the impact where it meets the art district and park, reducing the discernible threshold between them.
