As part of a larger masterplan, this 360m tall (71-floor) mixed-use office/hotel/observation deck tower is tasked with becoming the icon for a new science and technology district in Mianyang, China. In 2008, the city suffered a major earthquake, and the community was reticent to build tall despite the burgeoning need for office incubator space to foster economic growth. Additionally, the two principal program elements (hotel and office) do not traditionally stack well when attempting to create a singular building form, as their ideal lease spans are quite different. el high street that runs from the Zone 1 Battersea Power Station Underground station to the Grade II* listed landmark.
Global Future Design Awards 2025: Entries Open!
Take your work to the next level. Register Now…

Gold 🏆 Winner
Global Future Design Awards 2024
Mianyang Mixed-Use Tower
Skyscraper Architecture (Concept)
Firm
AECOM
Architect/Designer
AECOM
Design Team
Francis Cooke, Bryant Stanton, Xiaofei Shen
Location
Mianyang, Sichuan, China
Country
United States
Photographer/Copyright
©AECOM







With a deeply integrated design approach, a tower form is conceived that provides superior structural performance, creating lateral stability without the burden of significant cross braces within the building itself. This is achieved by sloping the exterior columns inwards in the middle of the floorplate. The sloped columns and perimeter trusses create a mega-frame, reducing the amount of structural steel required by 11%.
With a carefully orchestrated elevator system, the building form delivers office lease spans between 9 and 13 meters, ensuring long-term economic viability. For the office program, the client was targeting multiple smaller tenancies (incubator and boutique offices), allowing for greater flexibility of floor plate sizes than one would normally find in spec office configurations; the tower form delivers this variety. In addition to simple floorplate variety, each of the four tower office zones shares a double-height amenity floor between lift zones. These amenity floors host schedulable conference rooms, wellness spaces, and cafes, increasing interactions between different tenants.
The pattern of these double-height spaces continues in the hotel portion of the tower as well, forming the main lobby, restaurant, café floor, and the fitness, gym, spa floor. These elevated “town squares” foster a greater sense of community within the building and ensures tenant satisfaction and retention. Mianyang has a humid subtropical climate with 45% of the year having a comfortable outdoor temperature. The seasonal differences are extreme, with summers being hot, humid, and overcast, and winters being cool, dry, and with clear skies. The insulated glass façade does not require shading to avoid solar heat gain given the persistent overcast skies of the summers. Accordingly, daylight harvesting through the glass reduces the need for artificial lighting throughout the day. Over an annual basis, there is not enough available daylight to justify the first cost for energy production of PV panels. Glare, however, can be an issue for occupant comfort. A strategy is developed with horizontal ceramic frit within the IGUs to reduce this effect. The density of frit varies based on the specific solar orientation of the façade panel. With the creation of five different densities of frit patterns, glare control is cost-effectively achieved. The issue of glare extends beyond tenants to the urban context as well for glass buildings. The compound curvature of the two principal building facades serves to scatter the sun’s rays as opposed to creating large areas of solar reflection or worse, concentrating light and heat in the urban context.