Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and Research Co., Ltd. (BIAD) is a prominent state-owned architectural design and consulting firm, established alongside the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Its extensive range of services includes urban planning, investment planning, design of large-scale public and residential buildings, interior decoration, landscape architecture, intelligent building systems engineering, preliminary budget preparation, engineering supervision, and general contracting. Over the past 60 years, BIAD has consistently delivered high-quality design services, earning a strong reputation across the industry and developing a core philosophy centered on “Building Services for Society.” Currently, BIAD holds several top-tier qualifications: Class A certifications in engineering design, urban and rural planning, engineering consulting, cost consulting, tourism planning, landscape engineering design, and environmental engineering (physical pollution prevention and control).
Project Overview
The Phoenix Center is situated at the southwest corner of Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, spanning 1.8 hectares with a total construction area of 720,000 square meters and a building height of 55 meters. Beyond serving as a media office and studio production hub, the building incorporates numerous interactive public experience spaces, embodying Phoenix Media’s philosophy of open management.
The architectural concept embraces the idea of a “building within a building,” where independent, functional spaces are enclosed within an ecological shell. This creates multiple shared public areas between the inner and outer structures. The east and west shared spaces feature continuous steps, landscaped terraces, aerial corridors, and escalators, infusing the building with energy and dynamism. The design draws inspiration from the Möbius ring, harmonizing with the surrounding irregular street layout, corners, and the adjacent Chaoyang Park.
The complex comprises two main structures—the media office building and the studio building—wrapped by a striking, streamlined shell. This shell provides a smooth, flowing spatial experience. At its heart lies Phoenix Square, encircled by the Möbius ring and framed by a dynamic steel structure. It links the city’s main road to the west with Chaoyang Park’s lakeside green space to the east, serving as a public space and a continuous experience route that runs vertically through the building, showcasing the center’s architectural openness and richness.
Visitors can ascend from an arch bridge to an open platform on the studio building’s second floor, overlooking the western atrium wrapped in elegant steel structures that create a grand, vibrant spatial atmosphere. Adjacent to the city’s main road, this transparent, lofty indoor space connects urban life with the building’s dynamic interior.
Moving east along the second-floor platform, visitors enter the 1,200-square-meter studio production hall and can continue to a rooftop lounge surrounded by steel structures and sloping volumes, offering a spacious leisure area. From there, a walkway leads to the east courtyard by Chaoyang Park’s lake, which functions as a key transit link between the two buildings, a scenic viewpoint, and a pinnacle of architectural artistry within the public experience zone.
A winding circular ramp connects to the entrance hall, while a sky escalator provides direct access to the office building’s top floor—the highest point in the complex. From here, visitors enjoy panoramic views: the CBD’s impressive urban landscape to the south and Chaoyang Park’s open lake and shaded forests to the north. This continuous public circulation path, looping through the Möbius-inspired space, embodies the spirit of innovation, openness, and integration that defines modern media architecture.
Phoenix Center creates rich indoor spaces
Phoenix Center coordinates and integrates with the environment
Project Challenges
The building’s unique and complex three-dimensional forms presented significant challenges for detailed design and construction. Many unprecedented technological obstacles arose, rendering traditional architectural design methods and tools inadequate for managing such intricate geometries.
Solution
This project pioneered extensive use of 3D digital technology, marking the first large-scale architectural application of such techniques in China. 3D technology was employed throughout conceptual design refinement, architectural logic processing, structural design, and façade engineering. Building Information Modeling (BIM) and parametric programming technologies generated technical data that could not have been manually drafted, achieving design outcomes beyond conventional capabilities.
The adoption of 3D digital technology enabled vectorized precision, intelligent adjustments, and corrections, optimizing the project’s production, construction, and operational workflows.
High-Precision Digital Software Support
Digital technology in architecture provides a platform for exploring effective design control methods, enabling the realization of complex, high-quality forms beyond mere aesthetics in practical engineering.
For this project, various advanced 3D design software tools were utilized to express and validate all visual elements within the BIM model. The virtual building components maintain a 1:1 proportional relationship to their real-world counterparts, including geometric dimensions and forms, as well as non-geometric data such as materials and weights. The model achieves data accuracy comparable to aerospace and automotive manufacturing industries.
Multi-Level Digital Team Construction
The digital design team was composed mainly of architects, structural and MEP engineers proficient in digital software and complex form processing. A unified set of “3D Collaboration” design protocols allowed all disciplines to work on a shared platform. Specialized tasks, such as computer programming, were outsourced to consulting firms. The digital team also included manufacturers and equipment suppliers involved in subsequent design phases.
A Brand-New Working Mode
“3D Collaboration” is a digitization-driven workflow relying on BIM technology, enabling architects, structural engineers, and MEP engineers to communicate and share design results within a fully information-based building model. Coordination issues are identified early and resolved collaboratively through visual, intuitive communication, ensuring timely, highly integrated design outcomes.
Furthermore, this approach establishes a robust foundation for dividing and integrating design responsibilities, allowing efficient assembly and disassembly of work products among designers. It ensures all building systems reach the required level of design detail. This virtual construction methodology significantly benefits production, construction, and operation phases, while also advancing the entire construction industry chain.
Geometric Control System Based on Parametric Technology
Parametric technology provides a flexible control framework for geometric systems. By predefining and adjusting parameters, the ideal geometric relationships within the building information model are dynamically stabilized.
The Phoenix Center’s south main office building is developed from a smooth Main Building Foundation into a multi-level entity containing detailed component information. This involved a rigorous multi-level parameter control process: starting from architectural Basic Control Surfaces, deriving the Main Building Foundation, defining geometric control lines for beams, slabs, and columns, and finally adding decorative geometric control based on the structural framework. These multi-level parametric definitions lay a solid foundation for precise engineering execution.
Deriving geometric control lines, structural control model, and building control model of the main building from the Main Building Foundation
Parametric preset and control process of the main building’s decorative system
High-Precision Data Information
The BIM technology used in the Phoenix project creates a digital model that simulates building information within a virtual environment, containing precise and specific data. This allows architects to create and modify complex forms directly on a 3D digital platform without relying on information conversion from 2D drawings.
For complex spatial and geometric information that cannot be effectively represented by 2D drawings, BIM’s three-dimensional visualization enables verification and validation early in the design process. The Phoenix BIM model is updated in real-time alongside design development and building component production, ensuring that the final product matches the model’s specifications. This exemplifies the true value of BIM technology.
Moreover, all building system data and component information within the BIM model are rigorously defined by complex geometric rules, making the data descriptive, controllable, and communicable. This foundation supports subsequent design optimization and accurate information exchange.
Descriptive data includes freeform curves and irregular shapes, vectorized in 3D space to ensure each geometric element has precise data, which can be systematically output under predefined conditions.
Controllable data means these vectorized shapes can be manually adjusted via parameters to achieve the desired form. The Phoenix Center’s geometric control system itself is built on this adjustable parametric technology.
Transferable data refers to vectorized geometric information converted into universal formats, enabling smooth information exchange. For instance, architectural geometry centerlines for the shell steel structure beams are provided to structural engineers, forming the basis for accurate structural calculations.
BIM Assists in Design Control and Optimization
High-quality building information models free architects from abstract conceptualization, as relationships within the building—especially between irregular surfaces—are fully consistent with real-world construction. This enables architects to solve construction challenges virtually, enhancing both aesthetic design and spatial experience. This technological approach significantly boosts efficiency while ensuring final design accuracy.
For example, the project includes 100 twisted primary and secondary steel beams generated with identical geometric logic and uniform installation conditions. During optimization, supports were divided into upper and lower parts, with connecting pin axes standardized into 2–3 styles via a consistent curve-to-line shear process, facilitating unified mold creation and casting.
One particularly challenging task involved optimizing the circular ramp, which climbs 252 meters from a 7-meter elevation to a 19.6-meter-high podium on the fourth floor. Along its path, it intersects with the outer shell’s steel structure and the main building’s concrete podium, while maintaining a smooth and aesthetically pleasing slope. The podium’s inner wall features complex hyperbolic surfaces.
To achieve high-quality control within budget, architects leveraged the BIM model’s precision to analyze the hyperbolic surfaces and optimize panel layouts. They established modules and rules for managing panel deviations out of plane. Ultimately, a complete dry-hung SRC panel curtain wall system model was developed to guide production, processing, and installation.
Optimization of steel structure floor supports
Green Design Concept
The Phoenix Center’s complex form was achieved through extensive digital analysis of site conditions, planning requirements, and the surrounding environment. Autodesk Ecotect Analysis software was used to simulate and support green design strategies.
GIS data, satellite imagery, and maps were utilized to quickly create a detailed model of the surrounding urban area, aiding in planning, design, and volumetric analysis. Outdoor wind environment simulations helped avoid adverse street winds and adapt the building’s form and layout to the local microclimate. Autodesk Vasari Wind Tunnel software created a 3D model to analyze outdoor wind conditions based on Beijing’s meteorological data and neighboring buildings.
Digital Information Transmission and Integration to Transform Construction
1. Transfer of Design Control Model
As a research tool, BIM models carry the latest building data. For example, architects provide the complete exterior curtain wall system model to manufacturers. This model includes all geometric control data and a detailed solid model of the folded panel units, serving as parameters for fabrication.
The comprehensive curtain wall control model provided by the design team forms the basis for further manufacturing design, including control frame boundaries for each folded glass panel unit
This model defines relationships between each folded panel and its surrounding control information, controlling position and shape, and assigning unique coordinates and dimensions. This foundation supports detailed design development by curtain wall manufacturers.
2. Expansion and Processing Integration of Model Data
Curtain wall manufacturers deepen the design by adding components such as steel frames, aluminum keels, decorative aluminum plates, louvers, glass, and opening mechanisms for each folded panel unit. The total number of components reaches hundreds of thousands, all unique and irregular, resulting in millions of data entries—far beyond manual processing capabilities.
To manage this, manufacturers developed the Phoenix Center Data Information Generation System, an automated program that generates all folded panel units based on construction logic. This system upgrades the design control model to a detailed fabrication model and extracts manufacturing and installation data for CNC machining.
Transition from design control model data to detailed processing model data
Summary
The Phoenix Center curtain wall project exemplifies seamless integration between digital design and digital manufacturing, perfectly merging architectural design with industrial fabrication. It stands as a key demonstration of construction industry evolution in the information age.
While digital technology enables the Phoenix Center’s complex form to be realized beautifully, the true brilliance lies not in the technology itself but in applying it to achieve diverse, complex architectural visions with higher quality. This high-tech architectural space also reflects the designer’s commitment to human-centered design with precision.
With the Phoenix Center’s completion, visitors will experience a harmonious fusion of people, environment, architecture, and technological innovation throughout their journey.
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