Shenzhen China: The New Playground for Architects

Recently the construction team building the Kingkey Finance Tower in Shenzhen has reached the top. This is just another step in the long history of large and unique buildings constructed in China’s southern financial boom town. You cannot classify Shenzhen architecture in one class or genre. Shenzhen is a melting pot of inspired structures, some of which which are born into existence with the greatest of success, while others loom as behemoths that missed their mark. The one thing you can say about Shenzhen Architecture is that if you are an inspired architect, Shenzhen is definitely the place to seek to build your masterpiece. This town is full of visionaries that are setting up office headquarters and manufacturing campuses. They all want to stand out in the crowd so they all tend to get a bit eccentric when it comes to their building plans.

Shenzhen’s official invitation to build “anything in the world” has to be the Window of the World Park. This place has constructed scale models of all the notable historic buildings and structures into one theme park presentation.

The entire city seems to be built with an effort to improve on all of those ideas. It seems like everywhere you look you see the reality of a different architects dream.

When you visit Shenzhen after visiting a place like Los Angeles or even New York, you will understand the vast expanse of this canvas for aspiring architects. Even today, Shenzhen’s skyline puts the west to shame. In this city that TRULY never sleeps, Shenzhen is a seemingly endless expanse of lights, and illuminated building bragging rights. When you take a picture of Shenzhen’s “skyline”, you are actually only seeing 5 or maybe 10% of the buildings. Just imagine what the next decade of expansion is going to add.

That brings us back to the newest sky child of Shenzhen, the Kingkey Finance Tower. This building’s top is right out of Star Trek. Looking inside the atrium that crowns this tower you can see an almost perfect Starfleet Cruiser docked in at a space port. It will truly be a sight to behold when completed this year.

Note to all Trekkies….This is where you want to hold your “convention to end all conventions”.

Shenzhen is a city that is on a path to boldly go where no city has gone before. It will reach a peak of architectural diversity and beauty that has yet to be imagined.

Itia (Abroad)