This project presents itself as a porous vision of space, a flexible space that serves the needs of the brief and takes it beyond just a fixed set of preconditions. The mass of the site has been fragmented in a ‘feathered’ narrative. It layers itself in the same way that nature does with the constructed elements of a feathered wing of a bird. It is not one but many elements that together form a union of ‘flight.’
The clear design direction was not to form ‘one façade,’ a wrapped envelope that just has one face, but a multi-layered volumetric condition where the shifting and ‘feathering’ of mass and space create balconies, terraces, exhibition areas, art, and plaza spaces. The recess of volume creates the façade! A ‘canvas’ of form to recreate through the seasons like fashion and nature.
The ground level plays between lower and upper levels with its cultural performing actors of Flagship store, Museum, Boutique fashion, Commercial, Piazza areas and graded stepped space that are multi-changeable from piazza (Birdy Café) to fashion show catwalks. In the modern era we see, especially fashion adopt, host these kinds of spaces from Milan, Paris to London. It reuses and recreates within its urban fabric. It has in itself an intrinsic sustainability. This project defines sustainability through flexible, usable spaces. It is not one predefined space that can date, become redundant as time and technology, and needs change. It is the ‘canvas,’ like art and design that can brush a paint stroke and define the next vogue of thinking.
The hub and heartbeat of the project resides in the central volumetrics. It’s where the client can research, test and tailor the next moment. This is within an optimized 9m grid that with massaging can reduce column arrangement further to provide the client with a very optimized column free space.
The upper levels within the structural truss system plays perfectly into the functionality of photo base and sports and health which fit and adapt perfectly into the spaces of the roof system. It is a natural ‘home’ for this activity, as the ground ‘marketplace’ is freed up and the activities and health can embrace aspect across the panorama of Ningbo from the elevated roof level.
The simple but powerful building mass of the tilting rotund HQ and the new proposed E-Commerce permeable cube are a powerful symbol of the contribution that PeaceBird has made the community of Ningbo. This building is the perfect framework to innovate and celebrate creativity. This proposed project typifies this ideology with its shifting feathered multi-layered openness. It brings and opens fashion to the district.
It is like a living 24-hour fashion show where the fashion district is alive and transformable due to the architectural composition. This is not just a building serving one purpose – it is a building that has a significant community factor and seduces the need to interact with it from the surrounding environment.
