Located in the Qingchun Square business circle of Hangzhou, Hangzhou Xizi International is a metro superstructure adjoining Hangzhou CBD. With five-star hotels, finely-decorated urban mansions, international Class-A office buildings and name-brand premium shopping centers, it is one of new-generation premium urban complexes integrating residence, business, entertainment, office, shopping and many other functions.

Based on the concept of “city’s arched gateway”, the design starts from actual functional demands, obtains differentiated functional block combinations according to the effect of sunlight, lighting and other factors, and intersperses with boxes with special functions to effectively connect various service spaces. It also employs steering, shifting and other design techniques to shape a holistic impression of an arched gateway and vertical blocks.

The design of hybrid curtain wall system embodies the honed urban consciousness of the architect. By taking into account the scale of the city, the block, and the building itself, it flexibly uses tall, straight and clear “landscape” curtain wall, refined and well-spaced “woven” curtain wall, transparent and exquisite “partition board” curtain wall. It draws inspiration from a variety of traditional and regional elements from tall and straight line of bamboos in regions south of the Yangtze River to the subtle weave of Hangzhou silk and the refined delicacy of traditional Chinese lattice windows in the design of the three types of curtain walls to achieve a stunning visual effect of rich continuum of layer changes for the architecture from overall structure to its minutiae.

The project fully reflects the architect’s global concept of design - “from the design concept to presentation of each detail”. At the outset, the architect proposed a whole series of assumptions about landscape, interior, lighting and sign design to ensure a holistic consistency across the architectural design, and eventually realized them in an architectural work with an unprecedented unity and strong expressive power through refined whole-process management.