Hongkong Land's Yorkville - The Ring | PH Alpha Design

The Ring has officially launched on 23rd April in Chongqing. The brand new commercial retail complex encompasses a gross floor area of 420,000 sq. m., of which 170,000 sq. m. is dedicated to the shopping mall adn retail streets, 110,000 sq. m. to the super Grade-A office buildings, and 70,000 sq. m. to the indoor-outdoor botanical garden. The Ring is aspired to become a notable regional landmark, attracting customers and visitors alike from across the city.

The design team has creates a composite urban living space with indoor and outdoor space interaction, involving social interaction, culture, experience, entertainment shopping etc. The scenario-based design not only meets the spiritual needs of citizens with various space perception, also innovates commercial spaces and reshapes consumer behavior.

The overall master planning of the site maximizes visibility and accessibility to the shopfronts, with the retail cluster positioned along the main roads in an L-shape, creating “The Ring”. An enclosed landscaped commercial street takes its form as The Ring extends and embraces the two office towers above. The core of the architectural structure cuts through in an S-curve, setting apart the indoor botanical garden space with the outdoor terraced balconies, which serve as the primary and secondary visual anchors respectively. The balconies, in forms of stepped terraces, featured vertical greenery which echoes the theme of the design concept and strengthens visual connections between the building structure and its surrounding nature. At the heart of The Ring, the indoor botanical garden becomes the key focal point for people flowing through the indoor and outdoor zones.

A 48m-tall dome crowns the top of the large-scale botanical garden, sheltering open-style shopfronts knitted into multi-level terraces of greenery. Through sightline considerations and meticulous spatial planning, the botanical garden landscape visually extends and reaches beyond. Above the main entrance in the southeast, Through the movement of floor slab, the sightlines of the double-story green retail space and the botanical garden echoes from within, while the vast curtain walls showcase the nature design theme, inviting traffic from the outside.

Another significant feature of the design is the innovative modular design of the facade through parametric modelling. Different materials were used to illustrate the abstract theme inspired by the poetic scenery of “wind”, “woods” and “clouds”. Curvatures of the ceramic tiles mimic the breeze of the wind, while the texture of aluminium panels subtly hints various elements from the mountains. Moreover, the use of LED lighting adds glamour and magnificence, animating and breathing life into the facade.