Cifi Wuhan Twin Tower, a unique landmark, an organic interface

Located at the edge of Moshui Lake, which used to be one of the ten scenes in ancient Wuhan, the site is deeply connected to the waterside landscape, as well as the traditional culture. Architects intended to create a unique landmark with an organic and friendly interface to the city, blending itself into the continuous lakeshore landscape. Inspired by the story of Zhong Ziqi and Yu Boya, the concept of Chinese Shanshui is reflected in the building form, creating dynamic volumes with the imagination of mountains hunching up while waterfalls flowing down.
The towers challenge the conventional way of designing apartment buildings and the typical tower-podium relationship. Instead of stacking room units as a tower, the architects sketched a special ‘monolith’ with simple and elegant curvy profiles. The layout of the volumes defines the urban landscape corridor facing the adjacent Taohua Road, naturally forming differences between the two towers. The larger tower reaches the height of 101.7m and the other one 27m lower. Relevant but not alike, the dialogue between these towers becomes a visual focus amidst the surrounding neighborhoods.

With a total GFA in 75599 sqm, the project consists of apartment, retail, a sky club for the residents and a separate kindergarten. The dwelling units are designed to own fabulous lake views and livable interior spaces. Also, there are diverse apartment types for future users to choose from. The retail street below is open and well connected, carving a gesture of welcome to the public. By creating a vibrant and futuristic commercial atmosphere, people can experience new spaces and easily find places to stay and have a rest both indoor and outdoor. The façade design extends the original vision of ‘vertical landscape’ and takes biological concepts into consideration. On one hand, growing curves emphasize the free and dynamic building forms; on the other hand, alternate terraces on multiple levels form a vertical garden and provide balcony spaces for the dwellers. Parametric methods are used in the design process of the building skin to make the façade variable, flexible and controllable. The variegated façade of the twin tower will reshape its interface to the Moshui lakefront.
The balcony facade used a parametric way during design. Based on the simple volume, designers cut the surface in a way that is gradually increasing the depth of the balcony. The control curve is then used to generate the balcony detail part by grasshopper scripts.