MVRDV Designs a Pancaked Urban Living Room For Shenzhen

Rotterdam-based firm MVRDV has been selected as the winner of a competition to design the new Shimao ShenKong International Centre, a mixed-use collegiate complex to be built in Shenzhen, China’s Universiade New Town.

Described as a “multi-level urban living room,” MVRVD’s typically captivating and interestingly massed concept, Shenzhen Terraces, beat out 27 other submissions from an array of international architecture firms. Founded in 2001, Shimao is one of China’s largest real estate development companies.MVRDV’s vision for the center doesn’t take the form of a single terraced building.

Rather, the concept calls for a park-like campus populated by a cluster of “stacked plateaus” of various heights that will include a library, art gallery, and much more with an emphasis on culture- and education-focused programming.The largest layered structure, with its middle scooped out to form a monumental, semi-outdoor atrium, will feature a bus terminal and a conference center.

All of the structures, which resemble flat sedimentary pebbles or stacks of thin misshapen pancakes, will be connected by a series of walkways that form a continuous, elevated pedestrian route throughout the just-north-of-one-million-square-foot compound.