A civic centerpiece

As part of a master plan for the Pazhou district, the Guangzhou Chamber of Commerce tower reinforces the city’s commitment to high-quality urban public space. The office tower is lifted above the street level to create the “City Room,” a 22-meter-high atrium that provides an entry point to Guangzhou’s public transit system.

The building core is offset to maximize views and to create contiguous, open tower floors. As one of the tallest towers in the world with an offset core, it uses an externalized diagrid to brace against lateral forces and transfer its loads to the corners. This design creates a monumental gateway for pedestrians on their daily commute from the transit station below. The tower’s innovative structure, civic space, central location within the city, and identifiable form within the skyline elevate the headquarters into a defining centerpiece for the district.

The ground level indoor lobby is enclosed in 22-meter-tall panes of structural glass—the tallest single-pane units in the world upon construction. The glass enclosure allows visitors to experience the lobby as an extension of the outdoor public space surrounding the building. The design of the lobby is defined by the building’s structural columns and braces, a reflective ceiling, a sunken plaza with access to retail and transit below. All of these elements combine to create a multi-leveled urban plaza and a vibrant hub for the district.

The bracing system and offset core work together to maximize the flexibility of office layouts and extend the sweeping views of Pearl River. The robust braces reduce structural demand on the building core, which allows for a design that brings daylight into sunlight for places that are often dark and uninspiring, such as elevators, restrooms, stairways, and pantries.

Public elevators are placed at key locations to provide access to commercial spaces throughout the building. From the lobby, visitors can reach transit and parking below and two levels of food and beverage amenities above. The tower’s double-height sky lobby, configured with outdoor terraces surrounding conference rooms, health club, dining, and other amenities, serves as a transition point for occupants to move between shuttle and local lifts. With a permeable wall that allows for natural ventilation, the sky lobby offers a semi-outdoor space to enjoy in temperate weather.

Sustainable systems that maximize comfort

With a design focused on the core tenets of health, wellbeing, and accessibility, the tower is targeting LEED-NC Gold rating. The design team conducted extensive studies on the building’s exterior envelope, daylight penetration, and natural ventilation and airflow to maximize human comfort. Horizontal fins at the exterior wall surface provide direct solar shading and indirect reflected daylighting into the interiors. Linear air vents at the base of each floor are fully operable, allowing fresh air and localized custom temperature control. Fritted glazing, with various degrees of transparency and translucency, contributes to solar control and privacy.

Engineered to enhance public space

The tower’s structural system employs a lateral resisting strategy of a mega-braced frame system at the three main faces of the tower’s perimeter, and an eccentrically braced frame between the offset core and office space. This solution simplifies MEP coordination and maximizes ceiling heights. The offset core uses a steel frame system, which is better suited to seismic events than the conventional solution of concrete shear walls. The braces on the three faces of the tower are detached from the gravity steel frame and fully integrated with the architectural exterior wall design.

To create the “City Room” at the ground floor—a column-free space of 42 by 44 meters—the intermediate columns of the tower face are transferred by steel trusses, and the tower interior four columns in office space are sloped and merged at level seven with the eight corner mega columns at the ground floor. This design makes possible the building’s signature public space.