SHENZHEN LONGGANG WANDA PLAZA

Riding the tide of China’s socialization and accelerated pace of life along with challenges brought by the upheaval in 2020, an outdoor recreation means—“micro travel”, featuring close proximity, short time, leisure experience and relaxation—has seen an increasing popularity among urban population in the recent two years. Rather than traveling far away for sightseeing, young people increasingly prefer to visit nearby big cities on a short vacation and enjoy searching for something new and different from their usual places of residence in the similar urban planning and buildings. Amid this wave, Wanda Group keenly senses the new business opportunities. With a view to accommodating young people’s preferences and making “micro travel” more enjoyable, Wanda has launched a new concept of “the fourth-generation Wanda Plaza” in Longgang, Shenzhen through bold reform.
Leading the commercial plaza ecology, this project breaks new ground on the third-generation Wanda Plaza’s blending of indoor and outdoor pedestrian street and commercial building ecology. It is iteratively upgraded in innovation regarding scenario, technology and content, and added with functions of travel, culture, socialization and life, pursuing to imbue the concept of Wanda culture such as youth, growth, tolerance and future with more aspects of social life. This project features distinctive theme spaces like super-visual experience atrium called “Soaring High” and the romantic “Magpie Bridge” for visitors from afar, as well as a comprehensive sports hall of nearly 7,000 square meters and a children space of 20,000 square meters for visitors around. The strong comprehensive quality makes it an urban social complex that truly “explores consumer trends” and a revolutionary innovation for physical commerce.
Unlike the previous generations of Wanda Plaza built on flat ground, the “first fourth-generation Wanda Plaza” is a renovation project, which poses a major challenge in the design process in terms of how to better integrate the project’s interior effect with the existing building structure. For example, the structural space upgrade of the large atrium, the design of the grand escalator covering six storeys, and the effect design of the cantilevered structure of the 4-storey glass magpie bridge and side panels, and the stairs and pavilions in the fairyland all require professional cooperation and discussion between designers and structural engineers. By addressing these difficulties with the unremitting efforts of various sides, Longgang Wanda Plaza, Shenzhen is finally present with the most ideal and perfect visual effect.
The project’s business format is planned based on the four centers of tourism, culture, social and life. In this respect, designers abandon the uniform but tedious interior design of traditional commercial plazas and incorporate varied business ecology of each storey to boldly design their respective exclusive theme scenarios. The design goes from bottom to top, considers real to abstract elements from past to modern, and covers themes from earth to fairyland featuring childhood impression to future prospect. If strolling in a past commercial plaza is to read a read a report with the address in place and the standard bland, what Longgang Wanda Plaza presents to visitors are several art scrolls with distinctive scenes in unique style. The project breaks the operation idea of traditional commercial plazas and empowers them with a more far-reaching pattern and a more perfect ecology, taking a stable and powerful step towards the real sense of urban complex.