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Images © Zhonghai Shen
Health architecture can be anything in line with modern structure and aesthetics. But this health facility in China has redefined the true meaning of health architecture beyond environmental impacts as it demonstrates chemical connections and strong bonds on the physical attributes. The aesthetic of an exclusive structure always illuminates the environment where it’s built and thus induces infrastructural values, just like this Ascentage Pharmaceutical Headquarters. A new 147,000 sqm modern R&D and manufacturing complex in Suzhou, China. Built by OLI architecture for a growing Hong Kong-listed pharmaceutical company, the exclusive project represents the aspirations of Ascentage’s culture, whose cutting-edge research in Biotechnology has developed promising new cancer drugs for a future generation afflicted with diseases once thought untreatable or incurable. The state-of-the-art campus was realized using some of the most technologically advanced digital design and fabrication tools including parametric technology according to Designboom.
In organic forms, the state of the art Ascentage Pharma Headquarters built by OLI Architecture emerges as a new campus of seven building structures that is proud of discrete curvilinear shapes. Soft in nature, the public and employee programmed volumes are elevated above a glass base in a floating composition over a black granite-clad reflecting pool facing the main Xinqing Road. The 80-meter-tall R&D and Administration Building, the new symbol of Ascentage, sits at the intersection of the busy southwest corner of the 60,870 sqm site in the Suzhou Industrial Park, close to a new mass transit subway station.
In order to create a chemical bonding façade, a parametric tech idea was used as inspired by the benzene ring of the chemical formula which was used to annotate the planar bonds of the six carbon and hydrogen molecules. Each building facade is carefully designed using the benzene ring hexagon as the source form, which is then engineered to fold parametrically around the seven different volumes. These parametrically modeled facades using adaptive BIM families were then digitally fabricated using Ultra High Strength Concrete panels and anodized aluminum nodes and extrusions, affording distinct facade designs for the optimal balance of visual transparency and privacy. Together with new high-tech research labs and an expansive advanced manufacturing fit-out bathed with diffuse natural light filtering from its translucent roof, the distinctly programmed composition of the projects’ buildings creates a singular campus for Ascentage as described by Designboom.
Project Info:
Name: Ascentage Pharma Headquarters
Location: Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou City, China
Architect: OLI Architecture | @oliarchitecture
Design Lead: Hiroshi Okamoto AIA, LEED A.P. (design partner), Lin Bing (managing partner)
Design Team: Dongshin Lee R.A., Marcus Colonna AIA, Maher Tarakjian R.A., Hector Arenas,
Sanghoon Seo, Xiaoyu Wang, Alara Akiltopu, Amanda Chin
Curtainwall Consultant: Talweg Engineering Studio D.P.C.
Client Rep. Name: Guoning Zhang
Site Area: 60,871 sqm
Building Area: 146,842 sqm
Above Ground Building Area: 123,917 sqm
Basement Building Area: 22,925 sqm
Building Maximum Height: 79.8 m
Edited by: MJ | Buildace Magazine
