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Michael
Duncan
Associate Partner
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
From Planning to Buildings: Creating
a New
Financial Center for Beijing
Beijing Finance Street (BFS) will establish
a second financial center for Beijing and create a unique pedestrian-oriented
neighborhood for the West District. Located five blocks west of
the Forbidden City, the 850,000-sm project encompasses an ambitious
mixed-use program of Class-A office space, conference and cultural
facilities, two five-star hotels, housing, and retail/entertainment
uses. The project's 22 buildings, most of which are in construction,
are set around an eight-acre public park, together forming the heart
of the larger BFS development.
Begun in 2001, BFS's scale and complexity
as well as its goal of creating an international neighborhood and
destination-in time for the 2008 Olympics-required that the client,
design team, and local institutes forge new collaborative approaches
to design and management. To achieve a varied architecture with
consistent quality across the project, SOM mirrored the client's
management group with a core team of design and technical architects.
This team has coordinated the global design effort, which included
the full breadth of the SOM's services-from planning to infrastructure,
architecture, engineering, and graphic design-complemented by local
institutes and other consultants.
With the success of the first buildings-which
were completed in 2005 and sold to new owners-the client and design
team have engaged in planning for the greater West District, setting
the stage for future development that emphasizes BFS's finely grained
place making as a counterpoint to the city's large-scale parcels.
Chinese
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