DJI Sky City

DJI Sky City project is located in Liuxiandong, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China, covering an area of 17,600 square meters. It consists of municipal greening, ground level landscape square and main entrance garden, rooftop landscape garden of the podium building, indoor lobby areas, and 13 outdoor "Sky Gardens" in total from the middle floor to the top floor.It took more than four years for W & B Design to develop the schematic designs, continually discussing all components of the emerging design concepts with the client and consultant team, including test matching and arrangement of special plants, optimising design details such as paving materials, high-altitude windbreaks and rainwater drainage.The difficult problems of high level plant selection, water supply, drainage, fixing and load-bearing were solved by repeatedly considering the multi-engineering construction details together with the designers and DJI team. From the reconsidering and reshaping of the landscape concept schemes to the developed design and implementation, DJI and W & B Design, with the heart of an artisan, brought the inspired vision to life.The starting point for W & B Design was to combine the innovative gene of DJI with the suspended pod style architectural characteristics of the Foster + Partners’ high-tech buildings. Through the introspection of the old and new world order and the integration needs between high-rise buildings of the modern city and natural environment, W & B Design explored the combination and innovation for natural wildness and regular city, innovative organic design techniques, enhancing communication experiences of unique spaces at high altitudes between human and nature, and finally realiising an organic landscape system integrated by the two-dimensional plane, three-dimensional space and human participation. Possibilities of various ecological design solutions were explored and implemented, such as the exploration of suitable plants at high altitudes along the coast of South China, the selection of plants with different colors and textures, and the application of suitable paving materials like faux stone. From the above, symbiosis between philosophy featured by natural wildness landscape and the high-tech minimalist style is realized.