North Shanghai Gas Company

The administration building of the North Shanghai Gas Company, in Jiading, should serve has a beacon of aesthetic ingenuity across China. Neatly place on a small mount and surrounded by nothing that may obscure its view, a river quietly flows on the northern side of the structure.

Here is the description from Atelier Deshaus, the architectural firm who developed the building:

The final form of the building completely responds to the landscape in the northern side. The public office space is evenly planned in the center of the site, and the other spaces with special requirements, such as meeting rooms, VIP rooms, flow as the individual shapes from the mainly rectangle-shaped office space to face the northern landscape.

These individual spaces connected with the main building shape generate a series of linked-small-scale inner courtyards, which have broken the uniform of the interior space inside the building, and create a rhythmically inner space in the limited site, as well as bring sunlight into spaces in the northern side.

The façade material is another aspect of the building. Corten plate is selected for the façade of the space, and the interior courtyards are decorated with bamboo plate. The main office space uses fair-face concrete with bump pattern coming from the horizontal templates in the process of concrete pouring.

The design team were able to successfully enhances the distinction between the corten and bamboo plates to create a systemic flow with a light touch of contrast. Ultimately the building serves as a unique status rather than an ordinary administrative structure, which is strengthened by the distinction of the selected material.

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