cradle towers
cradle towers
the city is square and the sky is round,
five towers reach for the sky,
swooping as songshan mountainscape,
encircling at its base a public garden cradling,
a modern community built on an ancient soul
The Cradle Towers of Zhengzhou comprise of five mixed residential, office and hotel towers that swoop out of podium housing retail and leisure. Hollowed out to form a ring, the podium forms a threshold between the city and a soft, sheltered landscape within.
Zhengzhou is the cradle of the nation’s civilisation. It sits at the heart of one of the earliest settlement areas of ancient China. Emblematic of the peaks of the nearby Songshan mountainscape and the Round Sky and Square Earth proverb, the Cradle Towers celebrates the city’s origins as it looks to build its future.
A family of five towers of varying heights swoop out of the urban block to from a mountainscape. Vertical courtyards bring daylight into the deep plan at the base of the towers and establish vertical gardens up their inside faces. A fluid landscape spills out of the cradle and under the lifted podium ring, connecting the vast inner courtyard to the wider city sprawling beyond. At the peak of each tower a roof-top glass house simultaneously screens the mechanical plant floors and greens the skyline.
client private
location zhengzhou, china
status in progress, 2016 - present
architecture and landscape tonkin liu
structural engineer tim macfarlane glass
facade christopher eyres & associates