More than a headquarters

With its distinctive design, retail and social amenities, transit connections, and Class A office spaces, Poly Corporation Headquarters is designed as exceptional place to work. The wide spans optimize office layouts, while maintaining access to natural light. With its strong architectural presence, efficiency, and flexibility, the building set the tone for future develop­ments south of the site.

The stone-clad building’s triangular form minimizes the perimeter exposure to the elements, while interior atria give office areas maximum access to daylight. The resulting L-shaped office plan cradles the main atrium and enhances a sense of community by allowing office workers to see into other areas of the building. The northeast orientation also responds to the region’s cold climate by providing greater access to direct natural daylight.

The building also houses the Poly Museum, whose mission is to repatriate China’s cultural antiquities. The museum is contained within an eight-story “hanging lantern” that is suspended from the building’s atrium via four parallel strand bridge cables. Its crystalline surface of patterned glass is pleated to increase its light-reflecting and refracting qualities. Within the museum, bronze walls enclose exhibition spaces.

An ingenious structural solution

The building features a unique engineering component created specifically for the building: The Rocker. Inspired by an understanding of structures as moving entities rather than static objects, The Rocker supports the cable-net glass wall while releasing the effects of earthquakes and heavy winds. It also facilitates the suspension of the eight-story museum structure within the building’s atrium.

Structural analysis showed that the support for the 22-story-tall glass atrium wall could not be reasonably achieved using a conventional two-way cable net. It could, however, be achieved if the 90-meter-high by 60-meter-wide enclosure was broken down into smaller segments. A cable-stayed system was introduced by using two large diameter, parallel-strand bridge cables in diagonal fold lines while anchoring to the museum structure. The museum structure acts as a counterweight for the cables, introducing pre-stress and providing the required stiffness to resist out-of-plane loads caused by wind on the cable net. In addition to the diagonal cables, two additional cables and The Rocker were introduced at the rear of the museum structure to assist in its suspension.

Recognizing that the building would sway in multiple directions during an earthquake, the team developed a mechanism that would manage these demands while introducing no additional force into the base building structure. In the plane of the cable net facade when swaying, one of the two diagonal cables lengthens as the other shortens, with The Rocker acting as a “reverse pulley.” It uses steel castings/plates designed to pass between one another and interconnect with steel pins, allowing for movements in both directions.

Designed for sustainability and efficiency

The south and west outer walls of the building are composed of a vertical shading louver system and double-layer hollow low-e glass, the first time this system was used in China. The design maximizes sunshine in winter and shading in summer, reducing lighting and cooling needs.

The atrium serves as a large, public room and uses passive cooling to transition from outdoor to indoor air. Designed from energy-efficient double-skin glass, the cable net system requires minimal materials in comparison to standard, bulky trusses.

Additional sustainable systems include a roof garden that decreases solar load in summer and reduces heat loss in winter. Rainwater collectors and greywater reclamation systems significantly reduce the pressure on potable water demand, while high-efficiency building systems and low-flow fixtures further reduce energy use.