The office environment is not only a space for collaboration and creativity but also a place for leisure and social interaction. In office park design, Gad has conducted extensive research and accumulated practical experience. Their approach is to tailor designs to the unique cultures of owners and regional characteristics, enhancing the office experience and invigorating the park’s vitality.
Semi-Open Garden Layout
Guanrui Building is situated in Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City (Haichuang Park), a hub for high-tech innovation industries led by Alibaba. The site lies at the intersection of Yuhangtang Road and Haiyuan Road, flanked by office parks on both sides and separated from Hangzhou Normal University by a major road to the north. The surrounding commercial areas have limited connectivity and lack significant landscape resources as reference points.
This urban area, caught between development and vacancy, calls for a design that not only serves internal corporate functions but also contributes to the urban fabric. Refining and completing the urban puzzle is a key design consideration.
Meeting the owners’ requirements, the park accommodates headquarters offices, supporting commercial spaces, and rental offices. It also aims to offer customized spaces beyond typical office functions, such as reception areas and sports facilities.
Considering current conditions alongside a vision for urban openness and garden-style office concepts, the design embraces a C-shaped layout. This choice avoids irregular arrangements that might create awkward negative spaces and instead forms a cohesive internal garden system. The three office buildings are arranged with moderate turns, continuity, and setbacks, balancing integration and independence.
Pre-Set Degrees of Freedom
Office work often demands focus and intensity, but incorporating social and leisure activities can provide employees with vital breaks, fostering creativity. “Micro socialization” is a key design principle at Guanrui Building. Every two floors features an atrium, which, as headquarters and enterprises relocate, becomes a vibrant space for employees to relax, chat, or enjoy coffee—a space thoughtfully designed with openness in mind.
The 26-meter-high hall is split into two levels, serving as a basketball court and a badminton court, respectively. The staggered roof platform outside provides space for outdoor social interactions. Ground floor shops add commercial support and a lively atmosphere to the park.
The courtyard within the park meets the landscape and leisure needs of office workers. It borders the Haichuang Green Valley to the west and connects people from both office areas, creating a continuous flow towards the two street corner squares. Externally, the park serves as a community connector, supporting the vitality of street-level shops and forming a seamless circuit from office to social and commercial spaces.
Window Display Effect
The building massing aligns along the street, with blocks on the north and south sides oriented inward, forming two small street corner plazas. The bridge connecting Building 1 and Building 2, along with the golden outer hall of Building 1, symbolize the “doors and windows” through which the enterprise presents itself to the outside world, highlighting the park’s main entrance.
The bridge linking the two buildings is designed like a “finger,” featuring a slight narrowing and offset. It uses a weak connection structure to ensure stability between the irregularly shaped buildings. Due to its bold form and scale, this architectural feature has become a distinctive landmark along Yuhangtang Road.
The independent yet interconnected buildings engage with the city at different street frontages. The office building opposite Haiyuan Road also faces the street. To ease the massing pressure on this 90-meter-long Building 2 and mark the hotel entrance for vehicles, the design incorporates strategic setbacks. Building 3 is laid out as a trapezoidal, standalone structure for rental and office use.
Structural Technical Features
The structural innovation of Guanrui Building is most evident in the connecting bridge and the single-cable curtain wall system. Different bridges use strong and weak connection methods; here, a weak connection with sliding supports is employed to provide elastic displacement, absorbing vibrations effectively.
The forms of Buildings 1 and 2 connected by the bridge differ, with distinct seismic responses and vibration patterns. The weak connection approach mitigates seismic impacts caused by these differences. The bridge design also carefully considers vertical loads, displacement, elastic-plastic deformation, and walking comfort to minimize shaking sensations.
To achieve a clean and minimalist look, the large atrium curtain wall uses a single cable system. The cable’s high tensile strength and slim profile make it ideal for large surface areas, outperforming traditional keels. Only vertical cables are used here, and the atrium’s frame supports cable overlaps, ensuring sufficient tension and curtain wall stability.
Systematic Curtain Wall Design
The curtain wall is a key architectural element that defines the building’s visual language. Mixed curtain wall techniques often result in a cluttered appearance. To stand out from surrounding buildings, this design uses minimal elements, creating a unified facade language with only three types of glass: dark glass, baked enamel glass, and ultra-white glass.
Dark glass covers the wide surfaces, baked enamel glass is applied on the narrow sides, while the first-floor commercial areas and atrium feature ultra-white glass. Narrow glass surfaces are framed with lightweight metal plates for edge wrapping, and the golden hall’s ultra-white glass is tensioned with single cables.
The double-layer internal window sashes ensure facade integrity while allowing controlled indoor-outdoor airflow. The different glass materials emphasize the building’s dynamic form and tension.
Conclusion
The distinctive design language and open environment of Guanrui Building inject life into its surroundings, creating a secluded yet integrated garden within everyday urban life. Although office parks often struggle to balance their inward focus with the public nature of cities, this project demonstrates how merging the two can create overlapping spatial value.
In fact, lively office parks resonate more with our vision for modern workplaces—combining work, social interaction, and community vitality.
Project Drawings
△ General Layout Plan
△ Elevation Drawing
△ Elevation Drawing
△ Generation Graph
△ Node Diagram
Project Information
Project Name: Guanrui Building
Location: Future Science and Technology City, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province
Address: No. 1993 Yuhangtang Road
Type: Commercial Office Building
Design Year: 2016
Construction Year: 2020
Area: 57,498.64 square meters
Design Firm: Gad Jiedi Design
Project Director: Zhang Wei
Project Creator: Wu Xuan
Team Members
Architecture: Wang Yiran, Guo Xinxin, Shi Bo, Peng Yuanfang
Structure: Li Baozhong, Hu Daming, Song Renqian, Zhong Zhouneng, Guo Jun, Wang Xinjun
Water Supply and Drainage: Zhang Bin, Hu Min, Meng Dejuan, Qian Zijun
HVAC: Cui Daliang, Li Jinniu, Zhang Zhenhuan
Electrical: Lu Baiqing, Pan Xiaoyan, Wang Yue, Yu Haiyang, Zhang Ruohan
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