Guangzhou Daily Group Culture Centre Architecture Design

IAPA wins the excellence award in International Architecture Design Competition
for Guangzhou Daily Group Culture Center.
The site for the Guangzhou Daily Group of Culture Centre is located in the
Guangzhou Pazhou Headquarters Commerce and Trade Zone. It is in the east of the
south section of Guangzhou’s new central axis. Lies against the Pearl River on
the north, faces the Canton Tower to the west, enjoying a superior location.
Guangzhou Daily Group Culture Centre is a large multi-purpose building complex,
including office, exhibition, commercial, hotel, culture, and service. IAPA try
to figure out a smart way to create a building complex with a vivid image,
unique content and regional cultural features.
Paper and printing are the two of the most representative elements in newspaper
culture, which are the entry points in this design.
The folding paper is the original design inspiration. In order to show that the
Culture Centre is not only a carrier of the space, but also a carrier of the
information, while the newspaper is an important channel of information
dissemination in the information age. The form of the Culture Centre looks like
thousands paper folding together. It is a representative symbol of the
newspaper culture.
IAPA extend the folding paper idea from architecture to landscape. The exterior
landscape spaces use abundant water and subsidence-type landscape garden, so
that try to emphasize the regional features of the southern China water city
and the characteristic of local waterfront architecture. The different height
garden is not only blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape, but
also strengthen the building volume and the full integration and extension with
the surrounding landscape and water features.
The museum of the Culture Centre, IAPA treat it as a moveable- type printing
board which is one of China ancient great inventions . The rich type matrix is
not only make the newspaper museum has varied shape and strong thematic indoor
and outdoor displaying space, also express the deep historical origins between
the movable type printing and the culture of the contemporary newspaper.
In order to create the effect of paper folding, except for taking the form of
slabs overhanging, also putting in the external hanging metal sunshade devices
to emphasize the horizontal line structure of the whole building. This approach
effectively controls the light transmittance level of the building. It is also
very suitable for the regional climate characteristic of Guangzhou. The density
of the sunshade devices and the size of the glass area are determined by the
building internal function. About the device size which takes full
consideration of the human body scale and the sight accessibility etc., people
can enjoy the charming scenery of the Pearl River no matter standing besides
the window or sitting in the office.