In the tropical south of China, the Hainan Center building is under construction in a new central business district of Haikou, the capital of Hainan Island. Its height of 428 meters makes it the tallest building on the island. The tower will provide space for offices, apartments, shops, and a hotel.
Eight mega-columns arranged in pairs at the building corners form the tower’s primary structure. Their inclination changes in sync with the shape of the tower so that they separate halfway up and converge again at the top. The secondary structure derives directly from the program: While the offices in the lower section require flexible and spacious layouts, the hotel rooms situated in the upper section feature unobstructed views of the city and beyond.
To achieve this goal, a structural shift occurs in the system at the transition between office and hotel use: The struts of the secondary structure appear on the lower section’s outside, creating a clear-span space on the inside. On the 68th floor, the struts transition from the outside to the inside to provide the unobstructed views specified for the hotel rooms situated on the upper floors. At the same time, the load-bearing central core opens up into an atrium.
