335 financial center

Poly 335 Financial Center in Zengcheng, Guangzhou, is a 11,096-square-meter landscape designed by GVL International for client Poly Real Estate. Zengcheng, an ancient county whose name evokes the mythical mountain of immortals in the Huainanzi, is known as one of China's happiest cities and a financial ecological city. The nearby Baishui Zhai waterfall generates rising mist, and that image of cascading water and cloud is the conceptual source for the project. The 335-meter tower is the tallest building in Zengcheng and anchors a TOD development at the intersection of the Guangyuan Expressway, the Zengcheng metro, and the Guangzhou-Dongguan-Shenzhen intercity railway. The landscape translates the idea of cloud and waterfall into built form. The wide entry steps are planted with pink muhly grass, creating an effect of pink cloud mist, while star-like lights scatter along a zigzag path of white paving that reads as flowing water from above. The central plaza borrows the rocky peaks of Baishui Zhai as its inspiration: white ground paving inside the atrium resembles the white cascade of a waterfall spilling down to the ground. Water, planting, lighting, paths, paving, and plaza are composed in a zigzag language that layers linear elements into a cohesive whole. A sculptural cloud installation at one corner of the plaza breaks the soft image of mist, assembling hard, intersecting metal lines into clouds of varying sizes, while fine water mist rises from within them and a metal waterfall plunges downward. The design draws on the multiple characters of water, incorporating cascades, splashes, and mountain streams into layered water features that mirror the sky and surrounding greenery. A waterside tunnel effect leads through stacked water curtains to a lifted podium level that acts as the main route to the rooftop garden and a lounge space. The semi-enclosed layout balances openness with intimacy, holding still water features on polished marble plinths and a sculptural figure of a girl playing in a pool. Perforated strip walls create a water-curtain effect, filtering views between spaces. Throughout, potted asparagus fern, pine bonsai, and an open outdoor garden soften the architecture. Completed in January 2019 after design began in January 2018, the project conveys a lifestyle of continual renewal, where cloud and water, like the residential, office, hotel, retail, and housing programs within the tower, flow into one another.