Lamborghini, one of the best known automobile manufacturers in the world for its super car, which works tirelessly pushing the envelope and evolving the company’s corporate culture, creating a series of dream sports vehicles. Lamborghini has over one hundred dealerships throughout the world, but only fee embodies a unique architectural design. Lamborghini exhibition centerin Zhengzhou China is Lamborghini’s third independent designed exhibition center globally, after Milano and Dubai, Designed by PMA (PolyMorphArchitects).
The concept design of the Lamborghini exhibition center is inspired by Lamborghini’s classic vehicle type iteration; The building emphasizes a strong visual and spatial momentum created through the form, a strong, dynamic, twisting volume which is a result of use of 60 degrees angles which draw a strong relation to the surrounding site, creating a completely new type of architectural landmark.
Selection of the site is a departure from Lamborghini’s usual strategy, located in acity center location in a shop front which only offer limited options for how realization of the exhibition center space.Like an inverted triangle, the site for the new building is located near the airport highway at South Third Ring Road in the Zhengzhou New Zone adjacent to a 24-meter high existing building to the north with green park space located to the south, covering an area of less than 1000 m 2 . The biggest challenge of this project is how to mediate between these two conditions within limited space, combining the features of the site to create a building that can reflect Lamborghini’s corporate spirit and creating a truly exceptional design that is convincing to Lamborghini’s headquarter in Milan.
“Determined proportions, clear contours, precise lines and pure surfaces are DNA characteristics of Lamborghini’s design reduced to its very essence. ——Lamborghini Centro Stile”
The design starts with drawing inspiration from Lamborghini supercars’ powerful lines and dynamic angles. This logic is superimposed over the site, making use of parallelograms and triangles asa base language and expanding from there responding to the site. The entire building is surrounded by a continuouslyrevolving facade. From inside, visitors can engage in a type of spatial dialogue with the exterior environment through the windows unique design and spatial characteristics of the windows. Walking inside the building has the same allure or driving a special “super car”, while maintaining a spatial relationship between indoors and outdoors views. In order to eliminate the pressure of building volume, thedesign does not seek to conflict with the surrounding areas through use of continuous floor plates, butinstead creates a visual corridor through the building form the north by use of aprogrammatic twistbetween the two floors, creating anelegantpresence to newvisitors.
“Our design represents the sensation of the site brought by Lamborghini’s handling performance. Thearchitectureconforms to the site, creating continuous surface and integration of windows, establishing an interweaving between the building and surrounding site.The building expresses a unique DNA that is special to this site andculture of Lamborghini. This design embodies our consistent design principles and was approved by Lamborghini in the first meeting”, said Mr. Wang Chuan, founder andprincipledesigner of PMA.
The building includes four main functional spaces: new car exhibition area, services and maintenance area, VIP Lounge and management office. From the front view, the facade of the building inclinesbackward, inviting visitors to the public plazain front of the building. Two concave twisted volumesform the buffer zone and main entrance. The new car exhibition area is strengthened by the full-length tilted glass wall. Inside the building, inclinedcolumnsadd a tension to adynamic spatial experience.The subtle streamlined twist in service and maintenance area hides the entrance on the west side of the building, using the cantilevered second floor to create a functional cover.
The interior part features a staircase which wraps and follows the twisted triangulated geometry of the building massing, leading visitors to VIP Lounge on the second floor. This is also emphasized as well in the bar area. At the end of the second floor is the office for management staff. Here, the transforming of continue facade provides abundant day lighting to the office space, and also good views to the surrounding site. The platform outside second floor createdthrough shifting blocksalso provides visitors a platform to see the surrounding siteat a glance, as well as serves as a potential new area for exhibitions and events.
The design gives full consideration to the spaces required for an exhibition hall and respects the client’s culture as a key driver of the project.The entire space is activated by a design with continuous horizontalstriationscoupled with vertical twists.The external shape is defined by interior massing and flow of people. The unique facade brings out a bold visual experience. A simple but dynamic design leads visitors to explore and experience spatial uniqueness in this gigantic space of a “Supercar”.
