Golden A' Design Award Winner 2025
Verdant rooftop planes cascade across Jintao Zhai's Jiangmen Tech City Mixed Use Architecture in an aerial perspective that reveals a masterfully orchestrated urban landscape where biophilic design principles merge seamlessly with contemporary architectural ambition, the eye immediately drawn to the rhythmic repetition of living green roofs that blanket low-rise commercial structures in the foreground before stepping upward through graduated building heights toward residential towers at the composition's upper register. The chromatic scheme establishes a sophisticated dialogue between the cool grey-blue tonalities of glass curtain walls and the warm verdant greens of extensive vegetated surfaces, creating a temperature gradient that reads as both visual harmony and environmental intention. A crystalline tower at the left edge commands attention through its angular faceted geometry, its reflective surfaces catching atmospheric light and creating subtle gradations from steel blue to warm silver where sunlight grazes its planes. The compositional architecture employs a modified diagonal schema, with the primary vehicular thoroughfare establishing a strong leading line from the lower left corner that sweeps through the middle ground, organizing circulation and drawing the viewer's gaze into the depth of the development. Secondary diagonals created by building alignments establish a dynamic asymmetrical balance, while the repetitive module of green-roofed structures provides visual rhythm and unity across the middle register. The atmospheric perspective renders distant towers in progressively softer focus and muted blue-grey tones, establishing convincing spatial recession across what appears to be several hundred meters of urban terrain. Light quality suggests mid-morning or late afternoon golden hour conditions, with warm illumination casting gentle shadows that articulate building volumes without harsh contrast, while atmospheric haze lends a sense of humid subtropical climate. The textural variation between smooth glass facades, granular paved surfaces, and the organic softness of vegetated areas creates rich visual interest across multiple scales of observation, inviting contemplation of both macro urban planning and intimate landscape detail.
Jiangmen Tech City is a mixed use development that combines offices, research and innovation spaces, retail and housing on a site of 100000 square meters. The design is inspired by green terraced fields and by the arcade spaces of traditional architecture in southern China. Layered setbacks create planted terraces that extend greenery from the ground to the roofs. Public buildings face the main roads, while the residential area is placed on the north side. Shared work spaces and public squares support entrepreneurs, small firms and larger companies. Construction is planned in stages.