 BANK OF CHINABANK OF CHINA
Text by Pei Partnership Architects LLP
Brief description of the project
This project built in Beijing, China, balances time, place and purpose in a building whose spatial complexity, structural stability and high-quality execution advance both the process and product of architecture.
The design speaks of Beijing, enriching the community through a harmonious balance between architecture and nature.
Original and innovative in design, the building nourishes the future on the cultural roots of the past.
While Beijing’s building guidelines have given rise to large masses of buildings, uniform in height and setback, the new office development creates a contemporary standard to Chinese architecture; a building that is open and inviting.
The 1,880,000 square-foot building houses 3000 employees, a 2000-seat auditorium, a monumental banking hall, a reception hall, dining and other employee services, and a parking facility for 500 cars and 2000 bicycles – all within Beijing’s 150-foot height limit.
Clad in travertine, the exterior conveys solidity and stability and reinforces the street corridor, a unifying element for a city historically defined by its walls.
As the first travertine building ever executed in China, the honey-colored stone adds to the building’s inviting quality, while masking the yellow dust blown in seasonally from the Gobi Desert.
Over 430,000 square feet of travertine were cut from a single quarry and fabricated with the same type of honed finish, so that an unusual sense of cohesion is accomplished between the interior and the exterior.
The building consists of two L-shaped wings, embracing a 32,500 square foot central garden court.
The executive offices front on Xindan and Changanije, Beijing’s major thoroughfares.
A 195-foot tall glass wall rises at the juncture of the executive wing.
The garden focuses on a group of natural rocks from the outer rings of China’s Stone Forest National Park.
50-foot high bamboo and paired moon windows frame the space, capturing the essence of the garden in partial glimpses from the perimeter circulation areas.
The new office building is now one of the country’s most architecturally and technologically advanced buildings.
Sophistication resulted from careful crafting by a team of international experts working in tandem with local labor sources.
The building introduces important new ideas ideas about public space, the expansion of the architectural process, technological development and the establishment of new standard of quality, not merely in the detailing of the physical elements, but fundamentally in terms of architectural concept and expression.
Reasons behind the use of stone Nearly a half million square feet of stone went into the New Head-Office of the Bank of China in Beijing, enough to clad a 55-story skyscraper.
Great height, however, was not the issue, as rooflines are rigorously controlled in the low-lying center of Beijing.
The goal was to express the solidity and the strength of one of China’s most important foreign exchange banks on one of the most prominent intersection in downtown Beijing.
The permanence and the durability of stone made it the obvious choice for a cornerstone of international finance.
The 1,7-milion-square foot mass occupies a full city block and is clad inside and out with Roman classic travertine.
All of the stone was cut from a single quarry in Tivoli, and beautifully fabricated with the same honed finish.
The interior and exterior are thus unusually cohesive, as if the entire building had been carved from a single block of stone, like a piece of monumental sculpture.
The buff-colored travertine was specifically selected to mask the airborne Gobi Desert sand that seasonally blow in from the north-west, seeping into crevices and covering Beijing’s granite, brick and tile building in a fine layer of yellow dust.
The light colored bank stands out as a stately landmark in the largely grey city.
The Bank of China is the first travertine building ever executed in Beijing.
A variance was required because local classification considers travertine a type of marble, which is not approved for exterior use in Beijing cold climate.
Extensive testing was conducted to satisfy the objections of government officials, who are more accustomed to the greater density of granite.
Installation and additional information
All vertical stone panels were hung with a system of stainless steel anchors, while all floor stone paving was laid with a traditional mortar bed setting.
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